Ammunition CEO Jeremy Heilpern on Building his Agency | builders podcast

0:28There's a process here. expanded, acquired a video production company, and puts out fires on a daily basis. A really fun chat. And in my weekly segment with Marty Beckerman, who's the editor-in-chief of the B Newsletter, we discuss Crocs, an app where you can get day-old baked goods, and the importance of an efficient hiring process.

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2:03I'm here for my weekly check-in with Marty Beckerman, editor-in-chief of the Bee Newsletter. Hi, Marty. How are you? Hey, John. I'm doing great. How are you? Good. Excited to talk with you about interesting stories today, including one related to food. We seem to always like to cover food here. So when you go to a great pastry shop and you see day-olds for a dollar, will you save the money and grab the day-old, or are you going full price for the thing that was just baked? Oh, you know me. I'll go for the day olds. I'll put them in the microwave. You know, they might be a little stale, but you can overlook that.

2:37And I guess this week you're covering an app where you can actually get that fix whenever you want. Sure. It's called Too Good to Go. And this is in our good company segment, talking about companies that have a cool social mission. They partner with 12 ,000 restaurants in the U.S. All the food that's left at the end of the day that would otherwise just go in the trash and would be food waste, they sell it to customers on the app for just$5 a bag, whatever they've got at the end of the day. So I actually downloaded it. I saw it in the New York Times, thought it would be really interesting. And most of the places are bakeries and donut shops and, you know, the kind of carbs that are essentially illegal in Los Angeles.

3:26But if you love cheap carbs, this is the app for you. All right. Love it. So I've got two kids, Marty. And right around the pandemic, they both started wearing Crocs around the house. And they had these little kind of like things you could put in the holes in Crocs. And I understand that... Gibbets, I think they're called. They might be. And they're not the only ones. Tell me about the story about how Crocs had an amazing turnaround. Sure. This is in our new segment, Comeback Story, where we're talking about companies that were on the verge of bankruptcy and came back to be better than ever. So Crocs exploded in popularity way back in the mid-2000s.

4:06In 2008, they kind of peaked with$850 million in sales a year. By 2016, they were losing$32 million a year. They were shutting down hundreds of their stores. And it looked like the end for Crocs. It was the kind of shoes that maybe nurses wore for comfort. but nobody would call them fashionable. And then something happened around the pandemic. They started doing collaborations with high fashion brands, but also anyone who came to them, 7-Eleven, Pop-Tarts, they did collaborations with everybody. And they bounced back, kicked back to relevancy, I should say. And what's their revenue now? They're making$4 billion a year, selling 150 million pairs of shoes.

4:48It's up 12 % one year after 54 % of the year, 67 % up the year before that. They're just... Yeah, smart and savvy things that connect with kids seem like a great idea. And I've got to say, my son actually wears Crocs with socks. I don't know how I feel about that. You know, I don't think we're supposed to understand it. If we think it's cool, then, you know, then it's not cool. And if we think it's not cool, then, you know. It's probably cool. That's fashion. One of the last things you're covering I want to talk about is the hiring process. You know, I'm thinking about the time when I worked at Amazon.

5:22It was extremely efficient. I had one interview, one kind of interview over the phone, followed by a day in the office and was essentially presented an offer, if not right after that, pretty soon after that. And my understanding is that an efficient hiring process is pretty important these days. Right. We're talking about how in just 10 days, the most in-demand workers get snatched up by somebody. So a lot of companies now want to do lots and lots of rounds of interviews. They want people to do sample work. The idea is you want to know you're hiring the right person, which is good. But if it takes months and months to decide and you're just kind of waiting people to keep doing interviews, at some point they're going to give up.

6:07Actually, 60 % of job seekers drop out halfway through the application process if they feel it's going on too long. So companies should definitely pay attention to that and make sure they're not stringing people along for too many months. Thanks, Marty. Thanks a lot, John.

6:30In the first 30 seconds of my interview with Jeremy Heilpern, my audio wasn't working quite right. So I cut that out and we're going to skip to the 31 second mark after we had exchanged hellos. And I had asked Jeremy to describe sort of the beginning of his agency ammunition and how he got his first few clients. Also note that my side of the audio is a little funky, but Jeremy sounds great. His answers are great. It's a great conversation. So thanks a lot. And I blame hotel Wi-Fi. It's a funny story. So maybe backing up even further. For some reason, I've never made a dollar in my life that wasn't from advertising.

7:09I attempted to start my first agency when I was 12 years old. I ripped off some other agency online, trying to teach myself how to build a website. I got a cease and desist for the first time when I was 13 years old. So that was fun. Fast forward, 18, 19, 20, I started doing work with agencies around Atlanta. And I guess when I was 19, 20-ish, I landed at one that I ended up spending 10 plus years, got brought in at a director level, eventually took over as president of that firm for about 18 months when I decided that if I was as smart as I thought I was, then maybe I should go start my own. And November 2017, that's exactly what I did.

7:46I'm a big relationships guy. And I had a feeling that I had good relationships in the industry. I had good client relationships and that if I could set up a compelling agency that had something interesting to offer, people would follow. And that's exactly what happened. So those early days, a lot of the early clients to the answer the question specifically were just people that I knew or had done business with or had been clients of mine at previous stops. And, you know, we just we pitched them and, you know, look for opportunities and look to deliver on those opportunities. Well, hoping it would lead to more work.

8:16And that's what happened. In your early days, in your in your late teens, early 20s, what was so exciting, exciting to you about about marketing? What drew you to that, that Eric work? I wish I had a good answer for you. I think it was just something that for some reason, I was good at or thought I was good at. And, you know, it's easy to get into, right? It's easy to teach yourself how to code. It's easy to teach yourself how to design. I did go to college, got a four-year degree in advertising. And it's just something I've always been passionate about. And I think holistically, one of the things I like about it is when done correctly, we have a real ability to drive measurable outcomes for our clients.

8:51And I think that's fun. And I think it changes every single day. The trends are always changing. There's always something new to learn. There's some new media tactic we need to get our hands around. AI pops up. We got to figure out what to do with that, right? Like, it's always changing. So no two days are ever the same. And I think that keeps it fun and exciting. I want to ask you about all those things. But before I do, were you always called Ammunition from day one? What's the story behind the name? So I mentioned I started the agency November 2017, like March 2017. I think I was just I'd probably had one too many bourbons or something one night, I was just doing the domain look up.

9:29And what I didn't say earlier in my, I guess, introduction is that I never thought I would go work for somebody. Going back to those earliest days, I was always convinced I would just be an entrepreneur. And as I mentioned, opportunities just kind of came my way where it made sense, right? And I could go learn in another environment and how other people do things and leverage that to kind of figure out how I thought about those same things, learn more of the fundamentals of the business, if you will. But I think I always had this hankering to do my own thing. So I think every now and again, I would scheme starting my own company or whatever that happened to be.

10:02And I think it was, it was like early 2017. I registered like an LLC, a domain name and started like tinkering with logos and never did anything with it. And then November that year, when I decided to go out on my own, I was like, well, I got all this stuff, I might as well use it and get to work. And so I wish there was a romantic answer behind the word ammunition. I think I just thought it was cool. We do get a lot of good feedback about it. People seem to think it's cool. I think it stands out in a stack of RFPs, so to speak. The A gets us to the top of listings, which is also helpful at times.

10:33So there's some, you know, unintended benefits of it. But I think ultimately, it's just a it's a cool name that we've had fun with. Yeah, heck yeah. It's bringing everything you need into the into the marketplace. So there are all types of ad agencies serving all types of businesses. If you fast forward to today, maybe you could describe to the listeners what type of businesses you serve, maybe your sweet spot. And what's one thing, if you can narrow it down, that you believe that ammunition does better than anyone else? So I think when we started the agency, I was excited to start it. And then I also had this healthy skepticism amongst close friends and family that the world didn't need another agency.

11:10So why were we doing this? How are we going to really stand out? So going back to relationships, I had organically built some really good relationships with brands in the home and building product space. And I said, well, let's build an agency that's just focused on serving that one vertical and just build the best agency for those sorts of brands. Or at least that was what we were trying to do, right? What was nice about that is we were able to very quickly kind of get in the room with folks around that credential, if you will. I had some experience in that space. We had some good background there.

11:42So we're going to just talk about the business. What's keeping you up at night? What are the business problems you're trying to solve? I think we forget sometimes that marketing decisions are typically reactions to business strategies. And so if we could get really dialed in to what the business strategy is, then we could be better and more effective at helping craft those marketing priorities. And so that's what we did. It was brands primarily in the home and building product space. We joined all the lobbying and trade organizations. We serve on their boards. We really just kind of immersed ourselves in the category.

12:11Fast forward to COVID, as everyone got locked up at home, it ended up being good to our business because as folks were remodeling and expanding their homes and buying bigger homes, our clients were growing because they were making the products that allowed those things to happen. So as our clients grew, we grew. But as a leadership team, one of the things that we started talking about is we were seeing friends with agencies and travel and tourism, for example, that would just evaporate. we're saying it could have been us. We don't want to be so dialed into one specific category that if it goes sideways, so do we, right?

12:43And so at that moment, this is probably 2021. We said, you know, what's the underlying thing that makes this category tick, right? And then are there other categories that function similarly? So the criteria we use when we evaluate whether we're a good fit for a brand is typically they're, they are navigating a longer term selling environment. You know, it's not a beer and bubble gum brand. It's probably a considered purchase that may take six to 18 months to actually execute. There tends to be multiple decision makers in that process. So if you use the building example, right, you're a homeowner and you may have a feeling about the appliances in your home, but so might your kitchen designer, so might your builder, so might the architect, right?

13:19And so we got to get all those folks aligned in that purchase decision. And in many cases, it's a transaction you'll do like 1.2 times in your life. So don't think about the brand. And then suddenly you think about the brand relentlessly, and then you forget about the brand, right? And so How do you build those good brand relationships at that moment of need? And so those tend to be the categories we still serve today. Long-term selling environments. So, you know, brands in insurance, financial services, SaaS and tech companies, med tech, and then building materials tends to be a key piece of our business as well.

13:50That's super interesting. And you mentioned at the beginning that you're really excited about measurable outcomes. And yet you're also working in industries which might have a long like a long selling environment. So, you know, eight, 12, 16 months. How do you sort of bridge that bridge that that gap? So, you know, for us, it's about being as transparent as possible. You know, we have a healthy understanding that the more successful we make our clients, the more likely they are to keep us around. Right. And so we have every incentive to be as critical of ourselves as we possibly can. Right. So as you think about media performance, for example, we'll build the real-time dashboards and make that available to our clients.

14:28We review it regularly. We'll be critical of the things that we thought this was going to work and it didn't. But based on this data, let's reprioritize these funds over to this other platform, so to speak, so on and so forth. So really highlighting the good, but also solving for the things that don't go according to plan. And then working with them to get us close to that goal line of a transaction, if you will, as possible. So it is longer term, but it's all the more reason to have the right technology and data in place to be able to track that from that initial point of awareness through to that transaction at the end of the day.

14:59It sounds like a lot of what you do is digital. Do you feel like the sophistication of your clients and the understanding of digital and what it can do has increased or improved over the last few years? And what kind of gaps remain in the understanding of the business owners or principles that you work with? You know, it's an interesting question, one we could probably spend all day talking about, right? Like one of the things I find interesting is we can, let's use the building materials example, right? For a while there, it felt like it was a category that really lagged. And so there was always the opportunity to come in and update systems and teach what marketing automation is and why Salesforce is a good thing and all of this stuff, right?

15:42But it seems like there's kind of a bifurcation that's happened. And I don't know that there's any reason for it other than, you know, some brands have prioritized that level of transformation and some haven't. And so I think we can, you know, we were in a pitch earlier this week with a brand that I would consider very much on the forefront of having the right digital tools in the building. They weren't quite sure what to do with them, right? There wasn't that level of understanding just yet, but they knew they needed them. And then, you know, we've worked with brands who feel like, you know, it's the year 2024 and we're just starting our HubSpot subscription, you know?

16:12And so it's interesting. I don't know that there's anything that I can think of that really speaks to the why behind that. But I think the good news is that creates opportunity. Right. So for the brands that already have the tools in place, we can help them be better at it. And for the brands who are just getting started, it's an opportunity to shape what that looks like. Is there a change if you think back for the last few years, maybe since the beginning or since COVID? Is there been a change in what clients have been hoping to get from you? I'll tell you, in my world, clients are really focused these days on lifetime value, which wasn't as much of a focus, I'd say, three, four years ago in categories like wireless or internet or categories in which we focus.

16:55How in your verticals, has anything changed in terms of what the objective is? I think it's sales. I mean, as dumb as that sounds, right? Like as basic as it sounds, I should say. I think it's just sales. And I think where we've been able to prove to brands, especially if you think about last year, we kind of went through this. The recession is coming. Everyone's tightening their belt. So the recession is not coming. We can let's get let's get back at it again. And then this year, the calendar rolled over and we felt the same thing where, you know, we had the brands that we felt like were well positioned and they were kind of using the uncertainty to buy market share.

17:26And then the others that were seemingly kind of clamming up and waiting to see if, you know, economic Armageddon was really finally coming. And I think we're seeing again this year that that's it's playing out similarly to last year. It was a lot of holding our breath. And then, oh, shit, now we've got it. Am I allowed to say that on your mic? And now it's that kind of panic of, wait, now we've got to we've got to get things back in gear. I had a client this morning, shoot us an email. They've been waiting on a 2024 proposal for three months. They signed it today. And it was, can we get media turned on today?

17:53Like, OK, there's a process here. And so I think to the question, it's sales, it's outcomes. It's really, if I can spend a dollar to make two, I'm going to do that all day long. I think the days of let's just do it for the sake of doing it or the creative for the romance of the creative aren't here anymore. Obviously, you've got to do good creative. Don't get me wrong. But I think if you can pair that with tactics that are going to drive outcomes and you can prove those outcomes, that's, I mean, seems so obvious. But it's much easier to get that sold than not. I saw, anyway, that you acquired a video production company recently.

18:29And I'm interested in understanding why. I think video is really hugely important in our line of work. And taking it in-house has some pros, has some cons. Why did you decide to make that investment? And then when you think about the cutting edge brands, how are they using video today? Or how are you advising them to use video to produce sales? There's a lot of reasons why we did it. Maybe the starting point was I got tired of cutting checks to video production studios. I started to say, wait a second, can we do this? Can we figure out how to build this capability? I think as we started to unpack that, we were working very heavily with one in particular, the company we acquired.

19:09And we approached them about the idea of acquiring them. And I think they were a little skeptical at first. They hadn't really considered going on the dark side of the agency business, right? But as those talks progressed, one of the things that I started talking to them a lot about is it's interesting to me that, again, in the year 2024, most agencies, I won't speak for all of them, but we were doing it certainly, is we would come into pitch meetings or we'd come in to present creative and we would show a static ad lob and like a keynote or a Google slide. And that format's never what's going to see the light of day.

19:39The static thing isn't going to be what we're actually going to run. It's going to have to turn into a banner or it's going to turn into a video idea down the road or something like that. Right. And so it's almost like we were presenting things that in some level was valuable, but it was never really what the final result was going to look like. Video seemed like it was always an afterthought. Wouldn't it be nice if we had a video that could do this or this could have been a video? And so we said, what if we could kind of flip that around? And when we're pitching ideas, we could think video first and how we do that because we have that capability in-house.

20:08We've got editors. We've got directors. The studio we acquired is an Emmy award-winning studio. right? Like there's almost nothing we've tasked them with that they haven't been able to over deliver on. So it was really about, you know, we scroll it and we see it all day long, like video first everywhere. And yet agencies, I think, are still wired to not really understand that in house and bake that into the work naturally. It's always kind of a secondary component or something out of scope that we have to go sell. So for us, it was really just about integrating that into the way we think creatively.

20:36And then also kind of bolstering our public image around being more of a creative forward organization. Back to, we talked about a moment ago, I think because of how we started the agency, we had accidentally built a good brand around being like a digital B2B shop. And that really wasn't what we wanted to be known as. And so I think the acquisition also helped us kind of rethink how we were seen in the marketplace as more of a creative forward, full service organization. How much in terms of your videos are you using sort of like an influencer type hook? I think one thing that influencers, among many, that they do really well is they've figured out how to grab your attention in the five seconds to have you sort of like pause and consider what's going on, as opposed to seeing just like scrolling through and seeing effectively a TV commercial.

21:25How are you thinking about creative hooks with videos? How much are you doing with social? What's your thinking around that? You know, it's a great question. I would say we probably still do a lot of the more traditional 30, 60 second type of productions. We obviously do a fair amount of social for our clients as well. And so I think, you know, what we do in that arena, maybe not so much tied to influencers, so to speak, but it's really that bite sized snackable content. It's not overproduced. We'll send a we'll send a an editor out with a GoPro and just film something out on the street. Right.

21:58And then because they're talented directors and editors, they're able to make that feel interesting. and it's exactly what you're talking about. I'm scrolling through. You can go to the Ammunition Instagram and see us do it with our own people where it's almost like the video just started and you're halfway through it already, right? It's like, wait a second, when did I start watching this video? And so I think it's really just how those guys think and how they edit that stuff together. But I think at the core of it is meaningful content that people actually want to consume, right? I was talking to somebody recently where I think so much of what advertising's done for so long is it's been about stealing your attention, right?

22:27It's, I want to watch this video, but first, here's a paywall or first, here's an ad, right? and making that X as small as possible to get it out of the way. And I think for us, it's about making sure that content is delivering value. So I want to engage with it. And I want to watch the video to the end, so to speak. I don't know if your clients are asking you about AI yet, but are you embracing AI tools within your team or company? And then considering it's not like they were just invented, but like in the last year, obviously, focus has intensified there. as you've gotten into it, has anything changed in terms of your opinion about the utility of these products?

23:05It's actually a funny story. My director of product design came into my office recently and she sat down and she was very excited to tell me about this new AI tool she found that helps automate research. And she said, I don't know if I want to show this to you because it kind of feels like it's also eliminating my job. And we kind of laughed about it. I said, well, I think the way you keep it from eliminating your job is figuring out how you use it to get better at your job, right? So I think that is the necessary way of thinking about how we integrate AI. So as an agency, we have been very clear with our clients that we use it.