Scaling Brands with Jason Weinberger, Co-Founder of Mother Bear Agency

0:00On Builders, I interview CEOs, leaders, and entrepreneurs about building their businesses and careers. And today I speak with Jason Weinberger. He is the co-founder and CRO of Mother Bear Agency, and they work to scale brands. They work with marketers like me. I know Jason personally, and he's helped to bring clarity and scale to some of the brands I work on. So you'll hear a little bit about that in our conversation. But I think what you'll really get is the importance of having an integrated and holistic approach to marketing. And Jason talks a lot about what he calls the three C's, clarity, conversion, and credibility.

0:39Hi, Jason. How are you? Good to see you. Good. Good to see you. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Getting ready for the holidays, just shopping and all that. Let's start with Mother Bear Agency, where you're a co-founder and CRO. Could you talk about what Mother Bear Agency does, your offerings, and kind of what brands and sweet spots are for you in the agency? Also, give us a sense of sort of size. So we're a marketing communications agency for scaling brands, which a lot of brands could be scaling. So the way we define it is like a true sort of seed round startup is maybe a little too small for us.

1:14I think we think of ourselves as like the agency they grow up with. So they probably have something that's working well and they're really looking to hit the gas on strategy or communications acquisition. or maybe they've had like an agency that they don't love. And we get that a lot that maybe they, you know, we're kind of up leveling them a little bit on that end. And then I think on the, on the larger side, it can, it can really range. I mean, we have several clients with billion dollars in revenue. So, but they're still often growing and scaling. And I think that's a little different from the world I come from where I was working at a lot of big agencies in Chicago.

1:54go, a lot of those brands are really maintaining share. So for example, I worked on Miller Coors for like five years. John, you already know if you like Miller Lite or not. Most people already know the brand's not really changing and they're not really... They probably want to be a scaling company, but I think those aren't. So I think opportunities to work with brands that we see that we can really help grow or going through a moment of change for us is really exciting. In terms of what we do for them, I think kind of high level, we sort of have the three C's. So credibility, conversion, and clarity.

2:34So clarity is really like our brand strategy practice. A lot of times clients come to us and want to get straight to conversion, which is certainly an end goal, of course. But a lot of times they maybe don't have a great sense of either their brand or their target market and some of those things that get in the way of skipping to that conversion side. And then on the conversion, once we do have that clarity, we've gotten really good at both hands-on keyboard performance marketing and creative that converts has been a unique niche for us. I think we see some agencies are good at one or the other, but we haven't seen a lot of competitors yet that we find are good at both.

3:09And then on the credibility space, that's really been a huge growth area for us this year on the PR side. So we really specialize in something called data PR, which isn't super well known. And Katie, one of my partners, she's former head of PR at Zillow. And she worked with the chief economist there to really make the Zillow's estimate big. So that's right, using proprietary data, building a brand story around it that gets coverage. And our team's become pretty uniquely good at that, which has allowed us to really have some success this year and win some pretty big clients. So maybe back to Miller Coors, you know, maybe you don't want, you're not going to help Miller Lite, but when they, when they, you know, launch a seltzer brand or something like that, that's, that's the, that's the area where, where you want to come in and talk about clarity, conversion, credibility.

3:58When you're working with these smaller companies, let's say, or companies that, that are, are poised to scale, they grow with you. What marketing chops do they typically have? Do they typically have someone who's in marketing? Or are they looking to outsource the entire function to you? Yeah, it's a real mix. It's a good question. I think that's something also as we were defining our target. I think when we first started working directly with founders sounded great. But they often either they don't have the time usually and energy that you need to really do accessible program generally. So usually clients that are a good fit for us usually have one in-house marketer or at least a fractional person.

4:39We've been working with a lot of fractional CMOs and had a lot of success there. I think it's usually someone... It's not just about the expertise. As I said, a lot of it's about the time. A lot of times founders just don't have the time even to just approve copy to get something live and things like that and that kind of process. So usually at least a full-time marketer. And then in terms of extra capabilities, we really have a range. So some might have PR or performance marketing people in-house. We might be doing creative. Sometimes we have some clients that have creative in-house. We do the performance marketing, things like that.

5:12So we're pretty flexible and consider ourselves like an extension of internal teams to kind of create a full marketing sort of team, larger team and group. I think it's something we pride ourselves in rather than there needing to be a certain type infrastructure that we work with. Did you know that Builders is sponsored by business.com? I'd love to tell you about a new free membership from business.com for small business decision makers. It's called business.com plus, and it's designed to address the pain in selecting new products and services. What is the pain you might ask? It's things like knowing which vendor is best for your specific business, negotiating pricing, having access to someone who can answer questions for you.

5:53The new membership, business.com plus handles all of that with a dedicated advisor, pre-negotiated pricing and solutions tested and reviewed by experts. Check it out at business.com slash plus that's business.com slash P L U S. When you talk about clarity as one of the three things that you, that you work on, I think a little bit about, about brand identity. And is that, is that how you define it or is it something a little broader than that that can be part of that the output i think a lot of it like with a lot of clients that have come to us i think you can get in a room and different clients within that same company will describe the brand differently so i think it's it's really clarity on the value proposition i think really whatever we are working on whether it's b2b b2c anything miller light or healthcare sales to be honest the formula of really figure out a company's value prop, who their target market is, and how you make that interesting to the target market.

6:56That kind of goes across everything, I think, for us and just making sure we have clarity there. And Todd, who I know you know, for those who don't know, he leads our brand strategy. And I think workshops with him are always really illuminating of going through customer journey mapping and really talking through what things look like from the eyes of the customer. I think clients and also ourselves can be very in our own sauce. And it's really helpful to take a step back and really try to look at things from the customer lens. So I think that's often what happens during that clarity process. I'm curious where you think there might be the biggest disconnects in coming up with clarity.

7:39Because I've gone through these customer journey maps, as you know. And oftentimes there's like a business point of view on what something is that's different than how a customer would describe something. And as maybe you're not doing the clarity work as much as you're doing the conversion work, let's say, why is that clarity so important to what you do and what you specialize in at Mother Bear? Yeah, that's a good question. As I said, a lot of times people like to skip to the conversion work. And I think what we run into is if you don't really have a solid value prop, it's hard to make ads that convert.

8:19We really need to align on what the value prop and who we're talking to, both from a copy perspective for the ads, but also the hands-on keyboard stuff of who are we targeting these ads to? And you can waste a lot of money doing that test and learn by spending money on Meta to figure it out. You can just run a bunch of ads and do it for sure, but it's an expensive way to do it. If we take the time up front to really dig in a combination of data that hopefully the client has on their customers, not always, but most of our clients do, and some data there, and then also kind of discussion and intuition and putting ourselves in the consumer's shoes.

8:57Because a lot of times someone on the team has experience, you know, whether it's Miller Lite, it's like many of us drink beer, right? So it's like, whatever the most of our clients, we have some experience with the product. So I think that helps too, just from bringing in knowledge from the past as well. When you're saying that, there's got to be a value proposition in the message that matches with someone after they interact with that, I said message, but I meant ad, and interact with that advertisement to actually purchase or buy the product. And so I think that's what you're saying about clarity, match, and conversion.

9:34Yeah, totally. I think what we see is like, because specificity wins. So if you're working on like an electronics client, we have it, uh, chargers, Mac accessories, things like that. Like you can't just say like, it's the best charger in the world or the perfect charger for everywhere you go. Like that's where a lot of clients come to us. They like to be everything to everybody. And I think when we do the brand exercises, we find the right moments and make ads for that moment. So is the charger fast? Is the charger small for travel? You can't just say it's good for travel. It's really getting into the specifics about the product that we find converts well.

10:12I think that's why aligning on those touch points with clients early on is helpful before we start spending a lot of money in media. I agree with you, but let me try to debate that for a second, because I think the reason why it's so appealing to have a message that says it's the best charger in the world is because in theory, your total addressable market is larger if it's literally for everybody and if everybody should want it. How would you debate against my assertion there and say that by breaking these things up into smaller campaigns, you can actually, you know, grow faster, have a bigger runway in the future?

10:50Let's say there were in terms of reaching everyone for the charger. Let's say we've figured out there were sort of three use cases, let's say, rather than having one ad that we send to everybody or like having three different ads, one for each use case. So you can still hit everybody because the right if the three ads up to 100, but being all things to everybody in one ad just doesn't it just doesn't work in our experience. But you can hit everybody with with enough ads.

11:21So you create clarity so that you can you can have conversion and conversion can be measured in in numbers and revenue and profitability and all that stuff. but for like an up and coming brand or brand that wants to grow with you how do you think about brand value or brand equity and and um or do you even think about that do you try to quantify it in in some way and how should a ceo or founder or cmo in your opinion think about that as an intrinsic measurement in and of itself yeah for sure i think there's often this tension people think of Are you running brand ads versus performance ad? But I think in our experience, brand actually powers performance.

12:05And it doesn't have to be some big brand TV ad or something. I think still, even at the small levels for clients that maybe aren't spending a lot, maybe even say it's$5 ,000 a month in Met or something, still those ads need to be laying the foundation. It really starts first, honestly, at that size with the product. Sometimes we've had clients at that size come to us where the product isn't great, especially in CPG. We've tried products that don't taste good or you order them and it takes weeks for fulfillment, things like that. So I actually think for the small clients, sometimes when they think of brand, they skip to the marketing rather than like you ruin the brand experience if those nuts and bolts aren't right.

12:48But assuming that those things are good, I think for us, it's still building the tone of voice, building a consistent look of feel. And the brand is really built in consumers' mind over time. It's not just like a rebrand and the brand is it, right? So I think just think about every touch point. And as we hopefully grow the brand, and let's say if we start just with some simple meta ads, and then when I said we moved to video and then move to TikTok or various things that each time we're building on the foundation from the previous step. Yeah. And I can say from experience and actually working with you and your team that these little things work.

13:29We worked on an auto insurance brand with you. And one of the things that we felt like was our value proposition is being really satisfying, taking something that was an arduous process, selecting auto insurance and making it easy. And just one of the small touches was the car, like the little mascot is smiling. You know, it's a happy car. And so those like really, really little things can go a long way into making something more relatable, more convertible, et cetera. As an agency, maybe not a full stack marketing agency, but you do a lot. Where have you really leaned into using AI? And where have you where have you said, OK, this this is still important to be done by, you know, by humans and creativity, et cetera?

14:19Yeah, you know, it's an interesting question. I started as a copywriter and I'd certainly take pride in my writing and stuff. And it's been interesting when, you know, I think I started with ChatGBT when it first came out. I was like, oh, this is garbage. And now it's like actually a pretty good writer and it's gotten used to my writing style and all that kind of stuff. So it's certainly important to stay on top of it as it's changing all the time. Yeah, I'd say when it first came out, we didn't find it super useful like two years ago. And I'd say now we like integrate it into almost everything we do.

14:51We actually hired like a full time AI person this year. So it's amazing how that's kind of evolved over the last couple of years. And I think he's been great. So in terms of areas where we've been using it, certainly in initial simple stuff, I think like everybody sort of does of like research, initial thought starters, sort of you can treat it as like a junior copywriter. I think that's kind of table stakes. But I think what Hayden has helped us do is really build custom tools for clients. So for example, we had a donut client that, you know, we want to do a lot of research on and he built this awesome tool that monitors all of their competitors' social medias.

15:32So we're able to get real-time data on what they're up to and what they're posting and analyze it. And that kind of stuff's really cool. And it'll be interesting to see how that evolves over time. That's an interesting hire that you all have made because in a consulting or an agency-type business, you might think that type of role might not be supported by the business model. But it sounds like through operational efficiency and stuff you're doing bespoke for every client, you can actually get a pretty significant ROI from that. Yeah, everyone's worried about AI replacing people. And I think who knows what's going to happen there.

16:13But I think right now it can be a force multiplier. So it allows an agency of our size to really compete with agencies that are 10 times our size. I think it allows us to use tools differently and really move efficiently and have sort of thought starters. You can use it as a junior copywriter. Design is one thing that's a little harder. One, I don't think it's very good. But also, if they get you 70 % of the way to a headline or a paragraph, it's editable. It's really easy to change. Right now, the design, they're not like layered files. So if it gives you 70 % of a good design, you can't use it, essentially, right?

16:53So I think that might change over time. So really, besides design, though, I think in terms of strategy, deck building, research, we're kind of using it for a lot across the board, even for new business. Actually, we're working on some tools now for outreach and top of funnel. I'd love to talk through challenges that marketers or marketing departments are having today, 2025. 2025. Can you provide maybe an example of a challenge that marketers are having? You can anonymize the situation if you want. But what are the biggest issues these days in your mind? Yeah, I mean, there's certainly a lot of sort of global issues going around in supply chain, various things our clients have run into.

17:40But I think in terms of a marketing challenge that I think we've been working on is in 2025, a lot of signal loss in terms of privacy updates, platform changes for our clients on the performance marketing side. And that, you know, they were used to doing things a certain way, maybe with a different agency or in-house and we're seeing like a real drop in results. And the thing about a lot of these platforms is they're also using AI a lot, right? You probably noticed as you're using Google, right? There's the AI sort of summary at the top and Meta, and they're all integrating AI in, in some ways, really helpful ways and sometimes a little bit move fast and break things kind of a way.

18:22So that even though they're using AI, you really need someone sort of managing AI who knows it and can kind of ride the roller coaster a little bit. And I think that's something we've stayed on top of. and I think as some of the hands-on keyboard stuff has been changing, I think really focusing on creative quality, strong messaging, and focusing on broader audience targeting since we don't have as much granular targeting has been helpful and then also suggesting third platform tools we use a lot as well, which I don't know, name drop third platform tools, but there's a lot that we're using to help fill the gap that the platforms such as like meta and google used to do on their own um and i think that's that's been a big challenge for a lot of people e-commerce brands this year you started out in large agencies or maybe not your first job but you eventually got to those and you said you started out as a as a copywriter what was your what was what was the way that you became successful at large agencies and worked your worked your way up and and then and then what compelled you to go outside of just becoming an executive at a large agency and going out on your own?

19:36There's always sort of like table stakes of like, you got to be nice to people and work hard and those kinds of things. But I think one thing that worked really well for me, and I think about this for our younger folks, as we've moved to a remote world is I was always really closely paying attention to people at the companies I worked at who I thought were doing good work, whether they were my boss or not. Right. So I and I think that was really important for me as I as I moved up. And so, you know, it's like if somebody was making a great ad that I like, I just go meet them and I talk to them and like learn what they do and I kind of try to figure out how they got to where they are.

20:18And sometimes that would, you know, stuff again in a virtual world, I think is tricky. but um i'm at max stinson if he's watching this but like he really talented creative on gatorade which was something i wanted to work on and i just remember going into his office and i don't know all of his thoughts were kind of like this beautiful mind thing on the wall um which i don't know it was just not how i worked i was a very like write things in notebook kind of guy right and i don't know it was just like seeing that physically it was like oh maybe we should try that. Maybe I'll try that instead of just having stuff.

20:54And it did help. The first time we did it, my partner and I was when we actually got an assignment on Gatorade. And we were pitching the launch for Gatorade G2 at the time. And we worked really hard. We worked a ton of hours. My partner would even sleep in the office. So again, there's some of those table stakes. But I remember that was the first time we started putting stuff on the wall. And I would write stuff and he would draw stuff. And I don't know, I think that kind of unlocked something for us that maybe it wouldn't have if stuff was just in my notebook that he couldn't look at in real time, right?

21:27Because I just would just like sit and write stuff. And that was like my first big break is we sold the shoe boat commercial that launched Gatorade G2. So I don't know, maybe if I wouldn't have met Max and wouldn't have gone into his office that one day, maybe we wouldn't have sold that commercial. That's great advice. Favorite Gatorade flavor? uh i like blue oh cool blue i like is that the wrong answer well for me it is i like lemon lime um but uh but get great great great product you know it's it's interesting i feel like a mistake i made earlier in my career i wanted to work with people who kind of thought like me because i felt like that made things go faster there was sort of like there's sort of like less less tension i feel like looking back on that that wasn't the right way to approach a lot of things having people with different processes, working with different styles.

22:17Maybe there was getting on the same page initially might take a little longer, but then you've got a much better product at the other end because there were so many different angles you looked at while you were collaborating. I'm curious how you think about team building in an agency, which has got to be super important because the best idea has got to win no matter where it comes from. You know, it's different at the big age as I came from versus how we do it now. I think, especially for us, I mean, we wouldn't be where we are now if we weren't good at hiring. It's probably been the best scale in terms of like running the business.

22:53There's a lot of aspects you need to do, right? But I think the right hiring and building teams and fostering collaboration, especially things aren't as simple as they used to be. I think, you know, used to just be like a writer and an art director and sit in a room and we didn't even have media at the agency. I mean, it wasn't even thought of. You just like think of fun ideas. Right now, everything we do so integrated that we don't come up with creative without thinking about the media and making sure that they tie together. They're a lot different now. So I think in terms of building teams versus how it used to be, it's a lot more cross functional than it used to be.

23:29just integrated and having a lot of people in a room who not only didn't used to be at a room before, but literally they used to be at different companies is how we think about it. How are you thinking about the future of Mother Bear in terms of scale? Is it your ambition to scale? And how are you thinking about doing it? Is it more services, more clients, more regions? Katie's in Europe right now, so I guess we have a European division. And yeah, I mean, we're certainly looking at growing. We've had a good year this year. I think we're going to end up growing about 25%. So I think that was a good one.

24:03And I think it's been really focusing on the areas that we've had success with clients and also the kind of stuff we like to work on. It's a little bit of a balance, right? And those kind of go hand in hand. So I think as we're thinking about next year is I think focusing on a couple of those areas that I think because we work on scaling brands, we've structured ourselves to be a little medium agnostic in the sense of like, when I was at previous life, if I was at like a digital agency, the answer to every client problem is a banner ad or whatever, right? Like you can't think holistically because that's how they made money.

24:41Or the reverse, I've been at agencies, everything's a TV spot. So I think based on the team we put together, we have experience across a wide range of medium. So we're fairly agnostic on a lot of that stuff that we really focus on the problem. And if you need PR or you need a banner ad, that is based on the problem, not how we make money. But I think also, despite that, there are a couple areas that we've just really seen unique success in. So just give a shout out, since I mentioned Katie, the PR team has been doing really well. So I mentioned the Zillow thing, and that has led to us in data PR, working with companies that have a lot of proprietary data and building that narrative and getting them coverage.

25:26So we've had a few big wins in that area this year. But I think one thing I'm recently proud of is we've been working with Indeed the last couple of years, Indeed.com. So naturally, they have a lot of job data, right? So we've been helping them just get attention for their internal economists and being the go-to for a lot of media when job reports come out. And the team had done such a great job at that, that actually during the government shutdown, which, you know, making lemonade out of lemons a little, but during the government shutdown, job data wasn't coming out. So then Jerome Powell, the chair of the Fed, was actually quoting R &D job reports.

26:02So that was just like a pretty, pretty good feeling, I think, and pretty cool on the team. And I think it's just such a great niche for us. I think that's an area I'd like to grow more next year. Outstanding. Well, Jason, thanks so much for joining me. Congrats on all the growth of Mother Bear. Great to see you. Thanks. Great to see you. Appreciate you having me.

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