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The Tracks Nobody Sees, But Every Marketer Should Hear.
This podcast celebrates the hidden gems of marketing insight found across all professions—both within and beyond traditional marketing roles. Just as B-sides on a single contain brilliant tracks that are treasured by true fans, every profession contains marketing wisdom that isn't obvious at first glance but is incredibly valuable when discovered.
Tom Hootman (01:44)
Awesome, so we're recording. ⁓
What do you say now? Fuck. How do you even start one of these things off?
anyway, you spent, you're an Ecom guy. Brick and mortar, have you always been in brick and mortar retail? Have you ever done like a straight Ecom?
Kent Zimmerman (01:57)
Yes, sir.
⁓
Like from a consulting standpoint I have, but as an operator, just brick and mortar. So Finish Line and then Shoe Carnival.
Tom Hootman (02:11)
Yeah. When you, ⁓ when you first got into brick and mortar, were malls already dead, dying?
Kent Zimmerman (02:17)
I think they were on their way out. And it's been an incredibly long time ago. It's scary to think back. Where were people going around 9-11? So were people going to malls? Right, I'm pretty sure that's the case. So mall traffic, think, in the late 90s. Once e-commerce
Tom Hootman (02:33)
No, we were already bitching about how malls were dying.
Kent Zimmerman (02:42)
I look, once Amazon started to be like, hey, people are actually buying things online. think mall traffic started to its downward spiral, maybe slowly at the time, right? Because it took a while. mean, even with, if there's many people have been buying things online for 20 years, that COVID bump happened because people who just would never buy anything online had to buy something online.
Tom Hootman (03:06)
had to.
Kent Zimmerman (03:06)
And they're like, well, this is pretty convenient. So yeah, right.
Tom Hootman (03:10)
This is easy.
It's interesting too because we weren't big Door Dashers or Grub Hub. Yeah. And then COVID hit and it was like, okay, like we need to do something on the weekend that feels like a night out. Like, let's just start doing it. And we did it for like a year. And then you started to realize after like a year, year and a half, you're like, wait, what the hell am I doing? Like, this is like expensive and...
Kent Zimmerman (03:17)
Same.
But
it's still like it changed the way that consumers think about how they take delivery of things. So before COVID, you had to do free shipping. Of course you're not gonna pay for shipping. Why would you pay for shipping? And that was a very competitive thing. And what if your competitors started doing it, you had to do it. So you had to, you know.
Tom Hootman (03:43)
Uh-huh.
Kent Zimmerman (03:57)
spend over a certain threshold to qualify for free shipping. All of sudden,
People realize that you'll spend $7 to get a Taco Bell value meal delivered to you. Right? Who hasn't done that? Maybe one in the morning, three, sure. And so as DoorDash has kind of creeped into other non-food categories, I think it's kind of flipped back. It's like, you know what?
Tom Hootman (04:09)
I've done that, yes. At three in the morning, yeah. Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (04:28)
They're still not going to pay to have something show up five days later. But if they want it the next day, or if they want it the same day, they'll pay 10 bucks, right? And all because, I think it's all because of COVID. We would have never gotten there. DoorDash would have never been a thing. They would not be as big as they are without COVID.
Tom Hootman (04:49)
Well, they've they've obviously like a lot of retail brands, though, they've seen the like it's receded back to a new normal level. So as we have a few retail clients who are still running into normalization and and you know, this as an executive, you want to like hold on to that COVID bump, but like no one can hold on to it because it's people eventually go back out. DoorDash won't stop sending me shit. Mailers.
Kent Zimmerman (04:52)
you
for sure.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (05:15)
like physical mailers. Please, free, anything you want, we'll bring it to you for free.
Kent Zimmerman (05:16)
yeah, for sure.
Join our
reoccurring, give us that reoccurring revenue and you'll get whatever off of your next order.
Tom Hootman (05:26)
Yeah.
And I don't know anyone who did that. I didn't do that. I don't know anyone who like it was like this is.
Kent Zimmerman (05:31)
I know people who have, if you're a regular dasher. a DoorDash user, it probably makes sense. But I don't know. Every time I have something DoorDashed, I'm like, what am I doing? Like, this is just...
Tom Hootman (05:35)
Mm-hmm.
There's no shame quite like post-door-ash shame
Like someone said like there's no shame quite like McDonald's eaten in your car shame where you're just like what did I just do to myself like holy shit It's it's fascinating to me because it is a principle built on this used to be a thing where back in the day when you ordered a pizza? on a like a landline
Kent Zimmerman (05:56)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (06:06)
I had friends who would be like, and like tell the driver I'll tip them an extra three bucks if they stop and get me a pack of camel wide lights. And it was like an analog version of like, you act now, DoorDash is like, would you like us to stop at CVS and pick up Jujubees and Junior Mints? Yeah. So you've been in the retail side of like the brick and mortar, the tail end of the mall piece and then
Kent Zimmerman (06:14)
I'm kidding.
Sure. Sure.
Tom Hootman (06:34)
moved into like more of like the strip mall side. You've kind of seen, you've seen a lot. like how long have you been in retail? Like I don't want you to date yourself obviously, but I also don't care. So date yourself.
Kent Zimmerman (06:43)
Well, mean,
the cat's out of the bag, I think. So, 25 years. So, I joined Finish Line in 2000. And I specifically remember, like I had some e-commerce experience or what passed for e-commerce at the time, right?
Tom Hootman (07:03)
What was that? What passes for
Ecomm back then
Kent Zimmerman (07:06)
I was working for a company at the time called Thompson Consumer Electronics. And I don't know if you remember those guys. in... Yeah. Okay. Great. Yeah, yeah. They had that big Michael Graves building in Carmel that either people thought was really cool or the ugliest building they've ever seen. So I don't know the full history. So at one point...
Tom Hootman (07:15)
Thompson building in Bloomington,
Kent Zimmerman (07:29)
GE bought up all of the RCA brands, right? Like in the late eighties, they bought up RCA and they had GE had their own consumer electronics and there was a ProScan brand. And then at one point GE decided that the consumer electronics business sucks. There's just no margin in it. There's no margin whatsoever. So they decided to divest and a French company, Thompson SA.
bought them and they like, it's crazy. Like they were in the defense business. They were like a $5 billion French company. So they bought them and built that massive building up in Carmel, consolidated all the consumer electronic stuff in that area. So I was, I was working for Thompson and gunk works seeing internet stuff, right? Cause nobody, nobody was doing
anything around that space. And so I did a project. built a website for like small dealers, right? Small medium sized dealers. If you were Circuit City or Best Buy or Sears, you had dedicated, know, massive dedicated teams. But if you were just, you know, Bob's Electronics in Jasper, Indiana, you
Tom Hootman (08:27)
Yeah.
This is a very Indiana heavy show, by
the way, everyone.
Kent Zimmerman (08:43)
You had,
you had, or Effingham, Illinois, let's just get outside of Indiana. You had no dedicated sales reps. So everything was like, wow, we can do this stuff online. So we built that and we built an employee website and then, and then they hired, they brought in Price Waterhouse Coopers to do like rca.com. And, and that was kind of when I decided to leave because I was like, I don't want to manage.
Tom Hootman (08:50)
just outside.
Kent Zimmerman (09:08)
big five consulting company. I just don't want to do that. And found my way to Finish Line Right. And they're, they were just trying to figure out how to sell shoes online. And I say, guys, I don't know about retail. I mean, the only thing I know about retail is from the manufacturing side with electronics. No, absolutely not. Everybody wears shoes. Right. So I just said no. And they're like,
Tom Hootman (09:25)
You had no shoe experience at that point. You wore them, that's about it.
Kent Zimmerman (09:33)
Well, we can teach you retail. Retail is easy, right? The mechanics of retail are easy, right? We try to turn inventory to cash. yeah, they're like, we don't know ecomm We don't know the things that we need to do to become a profitable...
Tom Hootman (09:36)
As a former retail manager, fuck that. I take umbrage to that statement. Anyway, go on.
Kent Zimmerman (09:57)
e-commerce business. don't need like, like, and half the board thinks it's bullshit anyway. Right. So, so, right. So, yeah, so off we went and I've been doing that ever since.
Tom Hootman (10:02)
I still do.
So around what time, if you can pinpoint, was the first time you had an agency pitch to you? And off the top of your head, how many agency pitches, like conference room, PowerPoint, or I don't know, you're so old, maybe it was a flip chart, like Don fucking Draper.
Kent Zimmerman (10:24)
Now,
was the thing that had the light down, you wrote over transparent, an overhead projector.
Tom Hootman (10:31)
an overhead projector. Yeah, like my eighth grade teacher Adele Kretschmer used to use.
So like what year was that first like agency pitch?
Kent Zimmerman (10:41)
you know, what's funny is, is the, the, the definition of agency, think then is very different. Like everybody ran performance market, performance marketing wasn't really a thing. was a thing. Like we obviously were managing Google. There was no social media. there was, there were ads right out there.
Tom Hootman (11:02)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (11:03)
There was the notion of programmatic, but it wasn't programmatic. were literally calling some property, some media property, and asking them if you could spend some money with them to put banner ads on their site. So agencies at that point were kind of like what we call systems integrators now or companies that would
helping you do other things other than kind of the more of marketing side. We ran marketing. We ran Google in-house. We had a guy who just, like he ran paid search for us. And SEO was just a thing that was like, what the hell is that? Like, you know, we didn't really know how to manage it at the time. So, but we were getting pitches, like we started getting pitches for that side of the business, like, don't know, 2000.
four or five, that timeframe.
Tom Hootman (11:53)
Damn.
How many pitches you think you've sat in?
Kent Zimmerman (11:56)
I can't remember. Like too many, right? I don't know, a hundred.
Tom Hootman (12:00)
Yeah. And so you've learned that lesson of you and I have talked about this. Well, you've you fired me twice, everyone, ladies and gentlemen, Kent's actually fired me twice. But jokes all on you because you've hired me twice. I'd say, yeah, I beat.
Kent Zimmerman (12:05)
Ahem.
I hired you twice, but I had to
hire you to fire you though.
Tom Hootman (12:15)
There you go.
We've talked about this before where I just had this conversation with a prospect yesterday when we were in the discovery call and I said, Hey, really just my own morbid curiosity, how many agencies are you talking to? And she was like three or four. Perfect. Perfect number where you, you reap what you sow. Like the second you send out an RFP to like fucking eight agencies, you're like,
fuck, that's eight dinners, eight pitches, eight, like, gotta batch the Q &A together. Like, have you, you've stretched before and you're like, what did I do? Because they're like hounds, right?
Kent Zimmerman (12:38)
Yep.
Yeah.
I don't, yeah. And you kind of have to go through that. It's one of those things like after you do it the first time you realize that it's like, this is, I've got to get to a short list. I've got to somehow get this down to a manageable number because, everyone wants to wine and dine you. Right. there's, as you know, there's the pitch and the pitch is important, but
the social aspect of the engagement is almost as important, right? That's where you...
Tom Hootman (13:17)
And leading up to
it, even now post like this happening, this started because of COVID with Google Meets, sorry to interrupt you, but like with Zoom and Google Meets, like the pre-meeting, like can we go over our questions in a meeting where like any FaceTime you can get to build rapport. And everyone's kind of got that same fucking playbook where they're like, we try to get in front of them three, four times before we pitch so we can warm up.
Kent Zimmerman (13:32)
yeah.
little
mini pitches, vaguely disguised as discovery. We just want to ask you a few questions. then peppered throughout all of those questions is, oh, well, we did this for brand X, brand Y. And so...
Tom Hootman (13:44)
straight up. Just a few questions.
Well, those are I mean, I think those are
like the storytelling component is what's kind of like, like a like a lot of it's like, it's nature, not nurture, like you either have it or you don't. And I think that in those conversations, there are people who pivot really quickly to funny, you bring that up because feel felt found next question. And you're like, Great job. Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (14:17)
right?
Yeah, great.
Tom Hootman (14:23)
So there's
like a lot of agencies that like are very prescriptive about it where there are others who are legitimately like hey Like I seriously had someone who did the same thing and it went really well anyway next
Kent Zimmerman (14:32)
Yeah, right.
Tom Hootman (14:34)
So what's
your ideal number? if you're looking at like, let's say it's a publicly traded company, Brick and Mortar Retail, and they hire you and they say, great, we gotta go RFP.
Kent Zimmerman (14:45)
I think you've always, four, I'll just say four. Four is like, I think no more than four because if it's five, it's like, you probably haven't done enough legwork upfront to get it down to, I think, a manageable number of responses. you don't want to get yourself to the point where you see so many, you just get recency bias.
And so the last really good one that comes in, you're like, I like them. I've always, yeah. Right. I've always felt that you, need, ⁓ you, you're always going to have one that you think's the front runner. Like, we, like, I think they'll do the best job. I think they're, they're the right fit for us. And then you're going to, and then you're going to, they're probably going to have one or two that kind of look like them, but maybe they don't.
Tom Hootman (15:12)
You always want to go last for my seat.
Kent Zimmerman (15:35)
I don't know, maybe like, you're always gonna have to sell something to the executive board where if it's not the right fit, well, do they have retail? Do they have footwear clients or so has? Have they done exactly what we need them to do with the exact same type of client, right? That makes it easy. You're always gonna have those somewhere in the mix, right?
I think you got to have one in there. It's just like, I really like those guys and they're a long shot. But let's just see, let's just, let's just give them a couple hours and see what they can do, right?
Tom Hootman (16:02)
Wild card, bitches.
Yeah. Well, and it's interesting because from our side, it's always, was that a deal breaker or were they just feeling us out? Right. Like there's the, like there are times and there's a pitch. had an online EDU pitch and we had had a couple of those clients. This is 2012, 13, and we built a slide with like a map of all the campuses we managed. And it was like, you know, Joe's business and like,
Kent Zimmerman (16:16)
Right.
you
Tom Hootman (16:35)
the other client we had. And we went in and we were like, here are the, we managed 48 campuses nationwide. And they're like, they told us in the pitch, they were like, you know, the other agencies were talking to like average 200 to 600 campuses nationwide. And we thought we were like the, like the shit and we're like, Ooh. So we walk out and we're like, did that kill us? You're always like, did that kill us or not? It didn't end up killing us because some people want, want you to be closer to the business. And they're like, if you're really great at it it's all you do. This is why I don't, I don't believe in niching down.
Kent Zimmerman (16:49)
Right.
Tom Hootman (17:03)
If it's all you do each and every day, there's an advantage because you have experience, but like at what point does that become myopia where that's all you do every day. You're just kind of washing, rinsing and repeating the same strategies for everybody.
Kent Zimmerman (17:14)
Right. Like,
I think, I think there's, mean, yes, you want, you want someone that understands the challenges of your business, right? I don't want to have to explain to them the type of business that we're in and how it's important, but you want somebody who's stretched out and reached out to and done other things for other verticals because they learn things from that, right? And those things are often applicable to, to our business.
Tom Hootman (17:38)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (17:41)
yeah, it's, you know, it's, don't think there's any right, I don't think there's any right number. As you know, the last, probably the last meaningful RFP we did, we brought in, you know, some, what I thought were pretty heavy hitters. and if that's all we did, we're bringing in those two agencies and say, ⁓ you know, it's going to be one of these two. We probably would have never picked one because they both mailed it in.
And it's like, now what do we do? So I think you have to have a gamut of agencies that don't necessarily look the same.
Tom Hootman (18:03)
Mm.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's interesting. That's in line with feedback I got yesterday in that discovery call. ⁓ It's kind of interesting because you've got it, it's the differentiator, it has to be natural. can't be like, it's our people, everyone says that, or it's our tech, or it's our approach. it's like, shit, you're saying your team has experience up here and they all kind of ran to this middle ground because there's a sweet spot. Yeah, I like that because you can get closer to the business
Kent Zimmerman (18:14)
Good.
Tom Hootman (18:36)
the big, big names might mail it in or there's the common belief that you get the A team on the pitch and then you never see that team again, which we're all aware of. Like we know we have to have the team in the room. So there's a thing that at called it pitch magic. I hope I don't get sued for saying that, but like it's like the something unique for each pitch. what is the, what's the hook?
that's not in the pitch necessarily, but it could be anything from like our connection to the brand to all showing up wearing the brand to like the weird thing that makes them go, wow, that was really creative. Have you ever had any agencies show up? It's difficult with shoes, right? But like, I thought about what shoes I was wearing when I'm pitching you. It's like a thought, like shit. And then I was like, fuck it, I like these shoes better.
Kent Zimmerman (19:20)
Yeah.
Tom Hootman (19:23)
Because then you you overthink it and then you rethink it and you're like well if they're not gonna pick me because of the shoes I'm wearing that's weird but like is there anything an agency's done where you were like no one's ever done that before
Kent Zimmerman (19:29)
Yeah.
We had a, and I, this was Publicis right? So big agency. And it was, it was a kickoff. So it was not really pitch, but you should 100 % steal this for pitches. So they did an icebreaker at the beginning of the, of the meeting, just like, stick with me. So.
Tom Hootman (19:51)
I don't like where it's going. Okay, keep going, keep going. I'll shut the fuck up.
Kent Zimmerman (19:57)
It's just like, hey, we're going to ask you three questions. Just like, and then was prescriptive. And one of them was, what's your favorite ice cream? What's your favorite flavor of ice cream? And so everybody, they to stop and think about some of the other stuff, but everybody kind of knows what their favorite flavor of ice cream is. And then you get through the morning slog of stuff, death by PowerPoint. they had lunch brought in and then
about a half an hour before lunch, somebody left and then came back and had everybody's favorite ice cream. That's what we said. you didn't, yeah, sorry. I'm like, that's what I'm saying. I'm like, you didn't have to do that, but I see you. Like I see you. Right. And nobody, and nobody.
Tom Hootman (20:27)
That's pretty fucking good.
Did they? Yeah, it was a kickoff though, so they were already hired. Were they already hired?
business too. That's so good. That's so good.
Kent Zimmerman (20:44)
Like when they were asking the question again, it was just kind of wrapped up in this icebreaker thing. So nobody even thought about it. It's just like some stupid question that, you know, somebody was writing down going mint chocolate chip, rocky road.
Tom Hootman (20:48)
Bing, bing, bing, bing.
And then someone emailed someone
who placed the order and then it just like.
That's good. That's really good. It's a thing where I'm embarrassed to say this for years. We always had a client appreciation budget. And if it was like $1,000 a month, which honestly with like 30 clients is not that much money, but it's like you could send a little gift and like at the end of every month, it would be like, Tom, you have a week. have $992 left in your thousand.
Kent Zimmerman (20:58)
Brilliant, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah.
Hahaha!
Tom Hootman (21:25)
Because there's all these cool things you want to do that get shoved aside for existing clients even, because you just don't have the fucking time. You're like, fuck, I need gotta sleep. But when it comes to pitches, that's why I ask, because that's when everyone sits down and goes, okay, what can we do here? And that's where we've always played around with, and I still do this, play around with the team slides where we pitched a comic brand.
and I had everyone give their favorite comic book and our designer like put them with our our picture. When when I worked with Lego back in the day, we had our Lego minifigs of each of us, right? Like to kind of like show the connection to the brand. we pitched Jeff Allen will like this. If he's listening, we pitched a pet insurance brand like three fucking times, four, four fucking times and still never got the business over the course of like two years. They were kind of like
Kent Zimmerman (21:54)
⁓ nice.
Tom Hootman (22:15)
shit, will you finally help us? And then we go in like we're talking to two more agencies, but we had pictures of our pets, right? And I really wanted this brand because it was pet insurance. Everyone connects with it. And then also they had pictures of Cavalier King Charles Spaniels everywhere. And I was like, I want to work with this brand. And we'd like every time we thought we want it, but like the pitch magic wasn't very magical, obviously.
Kent Zimmerman (22:33)
Yeah.
I think, look, in your space, and again, like that last set of RFPs, everybody came in with some little connection to the brand. They all either went and got shoes, right? Or they, you know, they spent a ton of time or they said, well, hell, you guys did it. You guys did it in our original, maybe not the original pitch, but when
Tom Hootman (22:55)
I know where
you're going I think.
Kent Zimmerman (22:56)
You know, the, you know, the meeting I'm talking about, where there was some, social work that you guys weren't doing for shit. And I think Vanessa went in and, and did, and did basically like Instagram reels or TikTok reels in a store. And you could tell it was one of our stores, right?
Tom Hootman (23:04)
Vanessa Zavala,
one of your people
were like, that's the store in like Dallas. That's store 742. And yeah, she was back home visiting family and like went and did a mock up reel.
Kent Zimmerman (23:17)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that connected. That connected all the way to the top of the totem pole, right? ⁓ So you have to assume that everyone else is going to be doing something like that, right? ⁓ So it's kind of table stakes, but it like the ice cream thing was such a personal thing. Everybody remembered it.
Tom Hootman (23:28)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a nice touch.
Yeah, that's a good touch.
Kent Zimmerman (23:54)
No one remembered what shoes anybody had on.
Tom Hootman (23:57)
Yeah, it's pretty
it's a fastball down the middle to talk about the shoes or like, ⁓ you know, I, I also remember one of the pitches that I was in where we pitched to you where, ⁓ someone, and this was unscripted, someone like kind of like at the very end was like, Hey, like, I know your brand really well. They told like a really touching story about how they, they were very familiar with the brand because they were, ⁓ they fit the demo. It was nearby and it was like a connection to their family to when their mom would take them to shop.
Kent Zimmerman (23:59)
Yeah. Yeah, right.
Tom Hootman (24:25)
for shoes. And it was a totally off the cuff, like great story that kind of resonated because it was in line with the three and a half hour conversation about here's where our our our our customer lives. And then someone at the very end was like, hey, I'm that customer. And here's a story, which I thought was pretty cool. On those same the other side of that coin. What is like a pitch that where someone just absolutely
biffed it because you have to feel bad because you're vetting them. You bring them in you bring all the bosses in and they're like so shoes right like
Kent Zimmerman (24:57)
You know, I was really shocked. again, I'm not going to mention the agency, but we, we brought in, the last time we fired you. I, I would say, I won't say the last time, you know, the most recent time that I fired you. Yeah. you know, we brought in.
Tom Hootman (25:10)
The day is young, Kent.
Kent Zimmerman (25:16)
who we thought were just heavy hitters. Like these guys, if they bring their B team in based on what we knew they did, they're gonna jump to the top. 20 minutes in, my boss and I were texting each other. What the fuck? Like it couldn't get any worse At that point, we're like, well, it can't get any worse than this. Maybe.
Tom Hootman (25:32)
Huh.
Kent Zimmerman (25:39)
Maybe this person who's responsible for pitching a pretty important part of the agenda is just having a bad day. Right. And then it goes to the next person and it's like, Nope, that's not the case. ⁓ it's hard to tank. mean, you know, you're there to win a pretty decent chunk of business. If the, it's meaningful business to you, it's really hard to fuck that up. Right. ⁓
Tom Hootman (25:49)
Yeah
Mm.
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (26:05)
I think it's the ones that, like, again, the bigger agencies where, you know, maybe the, we were, we were trying to figure it out. Like, well, maybe they came in and just felt like they were column fodder. Like, like, like they had no chance at it. And, you know, Hey, we, you know, we have Disney and we have, you know, we have all these massive brands. What's a little, what's a little Shoe Carnival and their, you know, whatever budget.
Tom Hootman (26:27)
Yeah, you're small to them, maybe.
Kent Zimmerman (26:34)
what's that going to do for us? And let's, and I don't know. Right. So we, we really, we really didn't know what was behind that. Other than the fact that it was just, you know, it's like when you're interviewing, you know, I do this. I know I'm not the only person that does this. know within 10 minutes of interviewing someone, we there, we there, I'm going to remotely be interested in hiring you. Right. And it's like a two hour, a two hour pitch where, know, 15 minutes into it, you're like,
Tom Hootman (26:53)
Yeah, it's true.
Kent Zimmerman (26:58)
I don't think they can pull out of this dive.
Tom Hootman (27:02)
Yeah, we look for. We look for these when these come out. ⁓ That's when we know like, OK, shit dead air, like what what when do we have a showstopper, right?
Kent Zimmerman (27:06)
yeah.
Or you see obvious back-channeling within the meeting. Like maybe the phones are out, maybe it's just a laptop, but somebody starts reacting, smiling, smirking, giggling to what they're reading. That's probably not a great sign.
Tom Hootman (27:30)
No, or also, and this is always you never know, but it's this is a coin flip. But when the CEO or the decision maker in the room is like, All right, everyone, I got to I got to jump. have a I have a hard stop here. I got to leave the room. And you're like an hour into a two hour pitch and you're like
Kent Zimmerman (27:33)
GRR!
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. He's not engaged. I do have a, I think the, I think the most memorable pitch and it wasn't necessarily, a performance agency when we were at Finish Line So one of the really cool things we did at Finish Line back in the day, nobody was doing it, but we decided to do like ship from store and both of us were like, people will want to come into the store and pick things up.
and all of our inventories are in our stores. So why wouldn't we ship from those stores? But nobody knew how to do it. So I got this cold email, cold call, cold email, I don't know, from a company called Found. And that company, one of the founders of the Found was Steve Young. Football player, Steve Young. Yeah, so.
Tom Hootman (28:30)
quarterback. Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (28:32)
They had no customers. They were talking to one other customer, like Bebe in the mall, I think. And they're like, well, you want to come in and pitch. Like, this is pretty important. It's pretty cool. We're a startup. We're as startup as startups get. And we want to come in and pitch you guys. And like, okay, great. And then I, so the day they're supposed to come in, I got a call from our receptionist at the front, who was awesome. She's like, there are some
people here to see you. So I'm like, okay. So I send my guy, one of my guys down to get him. We're going to the room and they come up the stairway. There's Steve Young. At the pitch, at the pitch. There's four, there's three of them and one of them is Steve Young. So.
Tom Hootman (29:06)
At the pitch, Steve Young.
Steve Young sat in the whole pitch.
Kent Zimmerman (29:15)
Yeah, he's in there.
I was like, and I was like, fuck, I got to get our CEO in here. Like I, I was not prepared for, I was not prepared for Steve Young. So, ⁓ so we got our, we're scrambling, you know, go get, go find the admin. We got to get Alan in here and we're, hanging out and, Alan comes in for a little bit. They do their pitch, say their things. And then we get down into the nitty gritty.
Tom Hootman (29:21)
Yeah, Steve Young.
Kent Zimmerman (29:40)
And Steve's really not saying anything. didn't have a part of the deck, but he was vigorously writing and doing, you know, on a notepad. And it gets towards the end and I kind of stand up a little bit and look over at what he was writing down. You can probably guess what it was. He was writing football plays.
Tom Hootman (29:42)
Yeah, I was going to ask if Steve didn't have slides.
No talk track for Steve Young.
I'm so, I love where this is going.
Was it football plays?
It was football plays.
Kent Zimmerman (30:08)
Yeah, he was just doodling and nothing did he. Now, ⁓ he's...
Tom Hootman (30:13)
Still he got on the plane,
he flew out, he sat in the room like, what more do you want Steve Young to do?
Kent Zimmerman (30:16)
Yeah,
he was great. And we ended up working with him. We had breakfast with him in San Francisco after we were clients for a bit. But it was certainly memorable. Like, okay, I guess you can get away with that when you're Hall of Famer.
Tom Hootman (30:32)
Also get a Hall of Fame Super Bowl winning quarterback to sit on your pitch. That probably trumps the ice cream, fucking to be honest. Yeah, this is a go to my, I'll have to reach deep into the bag for that. wonder what Joe Montana's up to with the Notre Dame connection. When he's not selling Guinness, I can get Joe. So I wanted to talk a bit about when you work with agencies, because you've worked with a lot of agencies. there's this, you're kind of in like,
Kent Zimmerman (30:34)
That's better, right? Yeah.
Hahaha!
I'm sorry.
Tom Hootman (30:59)
like this like weird floating Ethereum sometime of like there's big teams on both sides. The agenda is every week. You meet sometimes two, three times a week. You don't know if you're delivering what they want to hear. You're trying to get feedback. And we always used to when you were in the room, you were always really good about giving context. And I think that's one of the, again, great quality you have of like, hey, folks, like we're talking around this, but like, I think part of it was you were just done with it. Like at the meeting, you're like, hey, we're talking around it, but like, here's, here's what we really want.
What's like, yeah, and I mean, get two teams in the room, tend to belabor the fuck out of the point. Along those lines, what are like?
Kent Zimmerman (31:26)
Romancing the problem.
Tom Hootman (31:34)
one or two really great things that agencies you worked with do once they have the business and you're working with them every week that like, you're like, this is fucking refreshing.
Kent Zimmerman (31:43)
I think the number one thing that I think that agencies that have excelled for us do is they perform under imperfect conditions. Because when things are great and things just click and you know, like when you've
exited from a client. Those aren't the things that are on your tombstone. It's like, well, they didn't do this or they didn't do this or they didn't do this. So the reason that you're even in the building is because things are imperfect with that customer, right? Otherwise they do it themselves. They'd figure it out. They'd plug in AI anymore. So when shit gets hairy,
Tom Hootman (32:17)
Mm-hmm.
Kent Zimmerman (32:24)
Right? When, when things aren't going well, it's the, it's the agencies, I think that the best agencies thrive in those conditions. And, and right, because there's a million agencies out there.
Tom Hootman (32:38)
50,000.
Kent Zimmerman (32:39)
Because you just make that number up or is there really
Tom Hootman (32:40)
No, there's no,
no, I someone Jeff sent me a study. There's 50,000 agencies. It's a ton. It's a it's a literally a million when you come to like agents 50,000 agencies anyway. Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (32:46)
Right. Right.
Right. So
it kind of comes down to why do we pick an agency? Yes, you have to show that you're capable of doing the work, right? You have to have other clients that you've done similar work for, right? You have to do all this. But at the end of the day, from a retail perspective, I'm just talking retail, right?
It's just chaotic as shit. And you have to have someone who thrives in that environment and performs when things aren't great. That to me is the number one. And the other one's like any partner or agency we've ever worked with, you have to feel vested in our business, like in our success. Right? And I think that's...
Tom Hootman (33:27)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (33:40)
That's what makes them a partner and not just a vendor, right? Or an agency. And I think you guys were partners in our business. In other words, we're locked arms and we're going down the same path. And you understand the challenges and we understand the challenge, but we're looking to you guys to be the subject matter experts and deliver on this thing that we don't have the skillsets for.
Tom Hootman (33:47)
Yeah.
Yeah, there's honestly, we did this once where we were brought back in with you and, had a conversation about that was unrelated to what we were managing day to day. But what I, your first instinct is like, why are we catching strays over this shit? Right. But the, but the reality is it means we're all in this together. So like bring everyone in and what does this team have to say about a problem that they don't touch?
that maybe they can provide some valuable input on or help kind of dress the wounds on that moves us forward, which I think is you good perspective that you gave me that helped me frame it with the team that got everyone fired up about going into the room with the right intentions versus like, wait, we're coming in for what? And I think that's part of like that good partnership piece in that even if you, and this is something that is like,
even if we don't do it. And you still get the look from the team, because I'm doing this now. We don't manage a channel, but the channel, we've identified areas where we think we could help. We're going to do a complimentary audit. And the client was like, hey, that's cool. Really, really amazing. Thank you. They don't have to do shit. It's not a sales pitch. We're not putting it in a deck. Literally an audit, sharing a spreadsheet, going to share it with them. I'm like, here's what we found. Please just push them if you need to figure out a way to fix it.
But like my Blind Zebra who's the sales trainers that we've used for years, Hanapin I'm still with them. Brian Neal does a great thing where he's like, if your intentions are pure, you're clean. Like you cannot go into it wanting, needing the sale. You have to just be a helpful partner and good shit will come back to you, which is also part of like where a lot of agencies get it wrong, where they look agency out versus client in. And they're like, they sit down and they go, we're not doing
this for that client, how do we sell it to them? And it's like, well, do they fucking need it? Does it really help their business or are you just trying to drive this line in your forecast up?
Kent Zimmerman (35:48)
Right. Right.
And I vividly remember the meeting you're talking about, which you guys performed just went over the top on. And I think, yeah, there was a few ways you could have reacted to that environment, right? But at the end of the day, you cannot, you,
Tom Hootman (35:58)
Was a doozy.
Kent Zimmerman (36:14)
can't control potential misalignment internally at a client. right? You don't know, I mean, hell, there were people in my own business who didn't know exactly what I did. They kind of knew what I did, but they'd be like, do I talk to you about this? So there's no way in hell they knew exactly what you guys were doing, right? But it was great. It you turned.
Tom Hootman (36:33)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (36:36)
that into a beautiful opportunity, I think, to say, okay, look, this is bigger than the original scope, but we've got to rally and we've got to try to communicate what our capabilities are around all this. ⁓ But again, I think that showed, you guys did it from a position of, hey, we understand these are challenges to the business and
Tom Hootman (36:49)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (36:58)
We've had less than 36 hours to figure this shit out. But based on what we know about your business, this is what we think you should do.
Tom Hootman (37:05)
Yeah, there's, there's the guardrails are pretty far apart, as long as they're acknowledged. So you can like there's freedom in that you can walk into the conversation as long as you frame it as. And I think I said it 42 times that meeting, we had like three days to prep a lot of this shit's going to be like what, but like if we can find one or two things and like that's where like it goes back to the creative creativity piece of like, there's no wrong answer you we've already got this business.
Kent Zimmerman (37:22)
Hahaha
Tom Hootman (37:30)
We really can only strengthen the partnership if we do things the right way and do our due diligence and acknowledge and set the right framework for half of this, three quarters of this might be garbage or stuff that you're already doing. Last question, I'll leave you with this. Retail's taking it in the teeth right now. It's really tough out there. If you were CEO of a large retail brand hired in tomorrow, what would you do?
What's top of your list to set yourself apart, right the ship aside from going back in time to 1987 and making malls a thing again?
Kent Zimmerman (38:01)
⁓
I would probably, if they don't know who their customer is at a forensic level.
I would find out. would put a Tiger team on that. And I would say, come back to me and tell me exactly who our customer is. Tell me how many different customers we have and help me understand how do we get more of them. Right now, growth is just tough. mean, there are some exceptions out there, I think, where retailers are growing, but it's hard.
I mean, there's so much macro bullshit that's distracting consumers from their normal lives. It's hard to get their attention. Unless you guys are in the... It's your job to help get my brand in front of the customer in a meaningful way. Well, if you don't know who the customer is, how are you going to do that?
Tom Hootman (38:43)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (38:53)
but you know, because we've seen, you know, you just look out on the, you know, on LinkedIn or wherever and you see, know, it's like, we're, just saw, I just saw a, ⁓ an example where somebody just cut half of their Google spend. We're not sure this is working. So they just turned it off as a way to do some sort of incrementality test. Like, well, interesting. you know, or just like.
Tom Hootman (39:12)
This is a giant test. Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (39:16)
You know, don't believe marketing is working. well, like, look, at the end of the day, I know how my family uses technology, their devices. I feel like I know where they need, where we would need to be from a brand standpoint. It's just, do you do it in a meaningful way and, and a lasting way and something that, tries to
Tom Hootman (39:31)
Yep.
Kent Zimmerman (39:38)
you know, get them in the store or get them to the website or, whatever.
Tom Hootman (39:42)
It's fascinating because the it goes back to like we said, no, if you know your customer, then you can figure out where your customer is, whether they're on like what platforms they use, like you can track all of that through audience intelligence. And I saw a reel like two nights ago about ⁓ shoe company New Balance, who were and this might be total bullshit, because it was a reel no way there was no footnote on it, but that they ⁓
Kent Zimmerman (40:00)
Ahem.
Tom Hootman (40:05)
they were the dad brand, the white Newbalances, and they weren't cool for years and down forever. they, yep, they brought in a new CMO. to that point, they were a heavy discount brand just trying to drive sales. 70 % was on, it was like really pushing discounts and 30 % was on brand. And the new CMO flipped it overnight and said 70 % into influencer and into social media and
Kent Zimmerman (40:08)
yeah. Barbecue shoes.
Tom Hootman (40:31)
really just showcasing the shoes and 30 % on discounting and selling the brand more than selling the shoes more than discounting. And for like 18 months, they tanked, which is hilarious because I think and this was years ago, I the average tenure of a CMO is something like 14 to 16 months. ⁓ For 18 months, they tanked and then month 19, it was up and they've been up and to the right ever since. It's no longer a dad brand that
Kent Zimmerman (40:48)
Right. Right.
Tom Hootman (40:59)
is out of fashion.
Kent Zimmerman (41:00)
I'll give you a great example of what I think you wouldn't do if you were in that position. So a great friend of mine was Chief Digital Officer for Solo stoves. So the outdoor stoves. And I don't know if you remember this. It was probably three years ago, maybe. I don't know if that's the right period of time.
But, um, they did a, they had a partnership with Snoop and it kind of came in, it kind of, campaign kind of came out of nowhere on Friday. He basically posted a reel Tik Tok everywhere. can imagine that he's going smokeless because I've discussed this with my family. And then for the next three days, like over the weekend, it's all anybody can like, I'm texting, I'm sharing it. And then on Monday.
Tom Hootman (41:44)
I remember this.
Kent Zimmerman (41:53)
there's a follow-up, right, saying, yeah, I'm going smokeless. And he's kicked back, and it's a smokeless stove. And then at the end of that clip, he gives this look to the camera, like, you idiots. I'm not going to stop smoking weed, right?
I'm pretty sure they fired that CMO in less than six months. I'm like, what did you think was going to happen from, it was a great campaign. Everybody talked about it. Like they did victory laps over that. How many CEOs like, well, you know, we didn't sell any stoves.
Tom Hootman (42:20)
How many stoves? Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (42:26)
It's, it's, I think the big challenge, right? It's getting, getting the brand again, getting your brand in front of the consumer in a way that they'll remember. I'm talking about it three years ago and just because I'm in the business does, it doesn't mean anything. Right. ⁓ And, and I think that I don't know them, right. But I'm wondering if maybe the, you know, the executive team there had.
Tom Hootman (42:41)
Yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (42:52)
misaligned expectations on what great brand marketing does versus what performance marketing does. What was your KPI for, what did you think was going to happen when you spent all that money?
Tom Hootman (42:59)
Yeah.
Direct response. Yeah.
Like they were looking for the number to go up immediately versus building a brand because particularly that brand is a luxury purchase. People don't have to buy them. People have fire pits. is a like they didn't know their customer. They probably didn't know they could have done some audience intelligence from get a little bit clearer picture of when someone knows our brand.
Kent Zimmerman (43:07)
Right. Right.
Mm-hmm.
Tom Hootman (43:26)
Here is the lagging indicator that they're eventually gonna purchase one, because I'm guessing they're expensive. I don't have one, I have a fire pit. It's Indiana, it's the Midwest, we all fire. And a good friend of mine has one, they love it. It's like, they're fantastic, but it's not an item that you go, cool ad, let me go buy one. And it's also not an item like a cool ad that's like shoes. You're eventually always going to buy shoes. So when you say I need a new pair of shoes,
Kent Zimmerman (43:33)
I bought one during COVID.
Yeah, they're awesome.
Okay.
Tom Hootman (43:52)
Let me go look at them because of that ad. A stove and also like, what's their, I mean, they sell one. I mean, does the average person buy 1.3 stoves? it's, yeah, yeah.
Kent Zimmerman (43:54)
Right. Right.
They have other shit. have other, you they have a little
grill attachment. They have three different sizes. They have a little one you can take camping. They have a big one for your backyard.
Tom Hootman (44:09)
So then
there also plays into the like, what's the next step after the big ad like?
Kent Zimmerman (44:13)
Right. ⁓ yeah,
for sure. Look, I'm sure Snoop wasn't cheap, but you could have built, you know, could have given enough runway, right? They could have built on, bolted on to that in a way that, you know, kept it kind of playful and, you know, didn't have the gotcha aspect to it, but.
Tom Hootman (44:34)
Yeah,
well that's when people feel like you fucking got me fuck them. What was it again? I don't care Because people then people start to worry that they look like an idiot anyway Kent thank you for your time today. I really appreciate it fantastic stories great to catch up ⁓ Yeah, I'll talk to you again real soon awesome see you
Kent Zimmerman (44:39)
Right. Yeah.
Great to catch up with you. Of course we will. All right. Thanks, buddy.