Jeremy Schwartz, co-founder and managing partner of Truth Collective, shares his journey in the creative agency world. He started as an account guy but was drawn to the creative department. Schwartz and his partners started Truth Collective, focusing on honesty and authenticity in their work. They built relationships with past clients and brought in expert talent when needed. Some notable campaigns include working with LensCrafters and Luxottica on a millennial-focused campaign called See Good Daily and partnering with Fannie Mae on their Duty to Serve program. The conversation covers various topics related to running an advertising agency, including the importance of purpose and meaning in client work, the process of winning new business, pitching to potential clients, competing against other agencies, and the impact of technology on the industry. The conversation also touches on the creation of a side project called Punkzels, which was a puzzle brand focused on punk music. The advice for aspiring agency owners is to embrace change and be flexible.
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
Jeremy Schwartz is the co-founder and managing partner of Truth Collective. With over 20 years in the industry, Jeremy has transitioned from account management to creative leadership, working with iconic brands across various sectors. His unique approach blends traditional creativity with emerging technologies, always emphasizing the importance of human insight in the creative process.
Justin Levinson (00:01.242)
Hey, welcome to Agency Side, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of creative agencies and the brilliant minds behind them. I'm your host, Justin Levinson, and today we have a special guest with us, Jeremy Schwartz. As a co -founder and managing partner of Truth Collective, Jeremy's vision for honest creativity has led him to collaborate with some of the most iconic brands in their industries. His unwavering commitment to crushing mediocrity sets him apart in the field. Today we'll explore his journey, insights, and the principles that drive his exceptional
Welcome to the show, Jeremy.
Jeremy Schwartz (00:32.664)
Thanks for having me. I appreciate
Justin Levinson (00:34.764)
Yeah, I'm so excited to be speaking with you today. So really appreciate your
Jeremy Schwartz (00:38.936)
No problem.
Justin Levinson (00:40.214)
Yeah, so let's get into it. How did you get involved in the creative agency world? How did you get
Jeremy Schwartz (00:48.75)
Well, going way back, I was always that kid who could occupy himself for hours, drawing, know, always pencil drawing. But I kind of knew that I didn't want to be a fine artist. You know, I kind of went through high school, didn't really have a portfolio, but sat down with my dad. My dad said, you know, you're kind of an art guy, but maybe you like business. Why not communications? So we sort of dug in, learned, you know, what that
Found the program at Syracuse University, which was a top notch communications program at the Newhouse School. And applied, got into the business school where I was studying marketing as well as advertising in the Newhouse School at SU. And then from there, it just kind of got in. I was more prepared to be essentially an account guy. So my first job in advertising, I was working in Stanford, Connecticut in an agency called Rotondo Partners.
And they had some fun accounts. had Ocean Spray, we had Slim Jim, we had the Red Stripe Beer. It was great. But I kind of knew very quickly that I didn't want to be doing competitive analysis all that long. I was looking over at the creative department, saw the fun that they were having. And I just knew that maybe I just had to pivot a little bit. So I left that job, went back to where I grew up, which was in Boston. I took a couple.
design courses at Massachusetts College of Art. But then like along the way I had some personal things going on. I was dating someone who then brought me back to Western New York, to Rochester, New York. So there I was in Boston thinking like, there's this huge vibrant agency world going on there. Now I'm moving to Rochester. And while that isn't exactly the advertising Mecca that I think most aspiring
students would be thinking about, there were some really interesting agencies here. And Saatchi & Saatchi had an office, it was called Saatchi & Saatchi Business Communications, where they were servicing DuPont and Kodak were sort of the biggest accounts out of there. And it was a pretty significant office. So I jumped around, ended up at Saatchi, but I really kind of understood what this business was about. I had some great mentors, worked there for a few years.
Jeremy Schwartz (03:02.67)
But then I eventually made my way back to Boston and I was working at some interpublic shops like Hill Holiday and I had some really great opportunities. So again, I've had this interesting career of bopping back and forth between New England and Western New York. But along the way I got the broadcast experience that really helped define my career as well as some really tasty design projects.
Justin Levinson (03:28.738)
Yeah, that's really cool. you were more of an accounts guy and you were saying that the creative sort of sparked your interest because you're seeing how much fun those guys were having. When you sort of made that transition, what sort of things did you need to do in order to kind of make that pivot?
Jeremy Schwartz (03:45.378)
Yeah, I kind of skipped over that because when I did move back here, know, it was right
Sometimes.
Jeremy Schwartz (03:56.706)
really changing the way design was done. So, you know, I got myself one. remember buying Corp Express for the first time and Photoshop and Illustrator, you know, they were still, you know, the key programs at the time. And I just started teaching myself a lot about how, you know, desktop publishing and desktop design was done.
So a lot of my skills were self -taught. I I had a nice foundation of business and advertising in general from Newhouse. I had my hand skills from my whole childhood. But then I did have to sort of catch up and kind of learn the business. But luckily, I got these great opportunities because there was a lot of cool shops right here in Rochester that gave me a chance. Perhaps even if I was in Boston, maybe I wouldn't have gotten the chance because they had
people coming from the best portfolio schools in the country, people who had spent, invested years and lots of dollars becoming great at advertising. So in a way, maybe my move to Rochester actually benefited me because the barrier to entry wasn't as high. But from there, I was able to just grow and like I said, take what I learned here from some incredible mentors. I had some bosses who went on to work at Goodby out in
Justin Levinson (05:11.013)
Yeah.
Jeremy Schwartz (05:21.974)
Cisco. mean, there were some really talented people here because Rochester was the home of Kodak. Kodak was the home of photography. There was a very visual kind of tradition happening here that, you know, I think is a little bit underestimated. Of course, that whole industry has changed. And like it, you know, the creatives that really helped put the brand on the map, you know, have moved on. But a lot of those people
helps really make a very vibrant communications
Justin Levinson (05:52.832)
Yeah, what kind of, when you say you had some good mentors that sort of helped you, what sort of like the most important type of mentor, was it more in terms of like on business mentorship or was it creative or were there people from that were already working in creative agencies or what sort of, how did that affect
Jeremy Schwartz (06:17.41)
Well, first of all, like being sort of a young visual creative. So I was coming up the art director ranks and some of these mentors just really showed me how the sausage was made. I mean, we spent a lot of time together sort of in the trenches, working alongside these very senior creatives and not just understanding what their influences were. I because I went from
I was kind of teaching myself the world of advertising really by looking at annuals of communication arts. Now, some of these guys that I was working with at Saatchi at the time, they were looking at the world of fashion. They were looking at the world of cinema. They were bringing in influences from outside of just that more narrow advertising path, fine art photography. And it just opened up my world to a more global view.
It was in part like that actual visual inspiration that I think really just expanded my horizons. also getting to really see how, you know, there's the making of the work and I think most of us can do that. Then there's the selling of the work. So how does that persuasion come in and how to end?
really instilling the confidence with the clients that these solutions that might be new to them are really viable directions and not just risk. So I think those were really like very influential years for me back in the late 90s that really set me up to be successful when I did find myself back at Hill Holiday in Boston and in some other
Justin Levinson (08:06.872)
Yeah, very interesting. So when did you sort of tell me how you got into starting your own business and how how how did how did you get into starting truth collective and what was that process like?
Jeremy Schwartz (08:08.098)
next
Jeremy Schwartz (08:12.61)
Bye.
Jeremy Schwartz (08:22.722)
Yeah, so when I made myself back to Rochester, I was working at a firm and it was funny, strategist that I worked with at Saatchi was also recruited by the same firm. So I had, you know, immediately a really nice rapport with, you know, the head strategy lead. And then also meeting the presidents of that firm who, you know, the three of us worked together really tightly on some, you know, on some key clients and a lot of new business
over the nine years that we were together there. And, you know, that agency ended up being sold to an independent network. And while we were all kind of on partnership tracks, that kind of ended one day with the sale of that agency. No hard feelings. That's, you know, perfectly viable way for that brand story to be told. But it didn't really exhaust like our
desires to see what it would be like to run our own agency. So we had to shift gears and think about starting something fresh. And we wanted to do it really ethically. We loved the shop that we were at. We built it all for about eight, nine, 10 years. So it was not about tearing it down. So one day we just decided that we had to just make the break. We wanted to win a bunch of business for them and walk away with this super golden story.
But that didn't happen, you know, so we're almost too busy to quit. So one day we just decided, look, we have to just pull the trigger on this. Like that agency was asking us to write up five -year plans. And it just didn't feel right to be trying to create the plan for an agency that we knew that we weren't going to be at. So we finally decided it was time. We wanted to try putting our own shingle out.
We gave notice, we left, and it was scary because we were starting an agency with no clients. Typically, folks like us usually take a pretty significant piece of business. And it was a little bit of a struggle because we were navigating the non -competes that are out there. But the good news was is because there were three of us, we had a pretty good network between the three of us with past clients and past clients that moved beyond
Jeremy Schwartz (10:46.7)
the brands where we had met them. So we had clients from our Kodak days or Bosh and Lawn days that had moved on to other national brands or even some international brands. And we just immediately dove into reaching out to those people, letting them know that we were out there. And the good news is we started getting traction really fast those first few months. All of a sudden we were taking meetings in Calgary, Canada and in Florida, like we were all over the place and business started coming.
We were working with some pretty significant brands like Smart Technologies, Cooper Vision, but also, because of some PR that we got out there, some very small companies were coming out to us and we treated them like gold. It didn't matter. We had like a veterinary research contract organization. We had a forensic technology company that specialized in legal tech, some really specialized businesses.
But we treated it like gold because we knew that we had to establish a great reputation right from the start. So business started rolling in and yeah, we were busy, almost too busy. We became our own bottlenecks. So that's when we started adding some folks to the team, both from a contract standpoint as well as a full -time standpoint. But we knew that we already made our biggest risk by leaving. Three executives at one firm,
leaving to start something totally new with no systems in place, no processes in place, no clients in place. But it was fun. It was wild. We had some good
Justin Levinson (12:25.53)
Yeah, well, that's an interesting story. what I really like about that is that you went to relationships that you had been previously in touch with, but they had moved on to other things and they were new places. But because you had such great relations with these people in the past, that you were able to come back to them and win new business. That's pretty awesome.
And it must have been really relieving when some of these folks started to come through and you were getting some work and things were starting to hum.
Jeremy Schwartz (12:56.418)
Yeah, and I think one thing that we were kind of smart from the very beginning, and I can really attribute this to my partner Bob, who's more on the operations, the account, leg of the stool that we had. We had strategy, creative with myself, and then kind of operations and account. So there was a lot that we could do together. But what Bob did from the very beginning is that we treated ourselves like a company. Yeah, we were three guys sitting around our dining room tables in those first few.
weeks and months, but we really treated ourselves like we were a company not just three contractors out there, know, like a SWAT team ready for hire. We, you know, we, we, think we punched above our weight and how we were sort of like approaching the business and setting ourselves up to be a company from day
Justin Levinson (13:46.49)
That's really smart. Yeah. That's cool. so when you guys started to win business and things were really cruising for you, and you obviously had that trio there that was really your core, and you were starting to scale, how did that sort of work out? Were you bringing people on sort of like full time or were you using a pool of freelancers or what sort of
made sense to you at that time when you were beginning to build at the team.
Jeremy Schwartz (14:19.586)
Yeah, so I mean, I'm just going to step back for a minute. So we call ourselves Truth Collective for, you know, there's two components to that. Truth is we really felt that honesty was needed in our business at the time. We really wanted to see if we could start an agency by telling the truth, meaning not just like working with clients and telling them what they wanted to hear, but like really get into their challenges with them and tell them what they needed to hear and then solve those problems along
But the second part of that is the collective. We always had this model where we knew that we had a really strong core with just the three of us. But we thought that we could always bring expert mindset to the table when it was necessary, whether that's because they've got category experience that we didn't have, whether they have skill sets like in maybe some real specialty technologies and so forth.
Like we could bring new skill sets and new aesthetics and new experiences to the table when the project needed it. And it wasn't just about being cheaper. It was just more about having the right brains around the table at the right time to get the best output for our clients. And so we're augmenting ourselves with these really great, talented people, people that I brought in
previous Boston days, other vendors, and these could be individuals, they could be companies, from all of our cumulative experiences working even between Europe, my strategy partners from London, as well as what we were doing in our previous agency. We had a very vast network. And that's why we've decided to kind of keep things really agile on our end. We've never tried to be a media buyer.
never tried to be PR pros because we can bring those people in as well as really specialist creatives and strategists and so forth. yeah, we contracted a lot in the beginning, but as business came and we knew that we needed a scale, we did start bringing in full -time employees. brought in some, you know, we had some more account management, some more creatives, you know,
Jeremy Schwartz (16:36.908)
because we were starting to actually service some clients on a longer term basis. So instead of having to kind of onboard contractors for each and every project, it was more effective to sort of start gaining category knowledge and brand knowledge for our clients and leveraging that for all the new projects that we were getting on a longer term basis.
Justin Levinson (17:01.454)
Interesting. And that's cool. The story behind sort of the mission statement kind of beyond behind Truth Collective. Do you find that you were searching for that truth with clients because in maybe previous agency experience, there was more of a bit of more of a like a yes man type mentality opposed to people, telling your clients like, hey, this is really
the path and I need you to kind of see where I'm going with it. Was there something that kind of made that pivot for
Jeremy Schwartz (17:39.628)
Yeah, I mean, I think that exists. You know, I think, you know, there was a lot there's a lot of spin in the business, right. And sometimes it just didn't feel good. Like, sometimes we were we'd be in new business pitches, and we were told to pump up the numbers of how many employees the agency had, or how many offices we had. And it just didn't feel right. Like, why do we have to be something different than what we are? Why can't we just tell the
And then it was funny, like we were feeling this way. And then we saw a Gallup poll at the time that really was sobering to us because it really showed that our industry, the trust in our industry was kind of at an all time low. And they actually had a ranking that put the advertising agency business somewhere but underneath ambulance chasing lawyers. But we were above Congress, which was actually pretty funny.
Justin Levinson (18:33.968)
You
Jeremy Schwartz (18:35.362)
But still, we weren't really held in high esteem. And we wanted to change that. really was. We were three guys that really loved rolling up our sleeves and getting into our clients' business with them and not sugarcoat things. Sometimes we just had to lay out what we really think the challenge is and then work to solve those problems. So it's definitely about how do we
avoid those sort of situations where we are just being yes men to get a scope. We really love marketing, we love business, and we really believe that creativity can impact business positively. And that was what our whole objective was as
Justin Levinson (19:25.102)
I like that. It's great to be authentic and represent who you actually are opposed to coming up with some facade. I can understand how a lot of companies want to appear that they're maybe something that they're not. that lack of authenticity, I don't think it really does anybody any good.
Jeremy Schwartz (19:43.222)
Yeah.
Yeah, I mean, it's competitive, you know, and you just you don't know one wants to lose a pitch because they're perceived as slightly smaller than the next guy or whatever those issues are. But ideally, at the end of the day, the work and the thinking that you put into it should is what should make the final determination. And, you know, if that's what someone's looking for, then we're not right for him anyhow. You
Justin Levinson (20:05.54)
Yeah.
Justin Levinson (20:10.66)
I like that, I like that. And as far as work that you guys have done, are there any specific campaigns or things that you have felt really proud of in particular that you would be interested in sharing?
Jeremy Schwartz (20:26.242)
Yeah, I mean so much that we're proud of. But I will say, one of the opportunities that we nurtured very early on got us working with Coopervision. And actually, Coopervision was partnering at the time with Luxottica, who owns Lenscrafters. And it turns out through this project that we helped them with, we got involved in a project with Lenscrafters where they wanted to
you know, they're a brand known for putting spectacles on people's faces. And, but there's a huge market for contact lenses and daily disposable contact lenses. So we did this kind of millennial focus campaign called See Good Daily, where we were sort of really trying to play into that, that very positive millennial mindset and how, you
all the values that they put into seeing the world for what's good in it and trying to nurture really positive values. We sort of engaged that mindset for this campaign for LensCrafters. But here we were just a few years in and we were working with this huge national retailer and one of the world's largest companies with Luxottica. we did several assignments with them.
Work with Luxonica, the umbrella brand. We also got to work on one site, which is their nonprofit foundation, where we were looking at this issue that people didn't have access to glasses. Something like 1 .1 billion people around the world just don't have access to vision care. Huge problem that could really affect
people's ability to learn, people's ability to get great jobs. So it was all around, mean, not only was it helping us from a stature standpoint as a company, generosity was one of our values from day one. And we really love working on community initiatives. And now all of a sudden we were working on this global initiative that was really fulfilling. But since then, mean, our largest client today is Fannie Mae.
Justin Levinson (22:37.572)
Wow.
Jeremy Schwartz (22:44.194)
Fannie Mae has a wonderful program called Duty to Serve. We make a lot of content for this mission that they have operating to educate people on access to housing and lots of other issues. When there are natural disasters, Fannie Mae comes in and helps people get back on their feet. And it's been also some really fulfilling.
Justin Levinson (23:08.794)
Yeah, that's really nice that the things that you're working on, you can feel passionate about creatively, but they're also, you know, they're doing good in the world as well. Do you
Jeremy Schwartz (23:18.88)me wrong. I love a really good campaign just about beer and coffee too. we've gotten to work with some there's some really great distilleries and you know we've got some classic beer brands here and those are also super fun as well. But it's really nice when there's purpose and meaning behind a lot of the work that we
Justin Levinson (23:23.401)
Yeah.
Justin Levinson (23:40.612)
Yeah, no, I totally understand that. What's the process for you in terms of like winning a new business now? I mean, it seems like you've got a core group of people and repeat business. How do you see like growth and looking at other avenues as
Jeremy Schwartz (23:58.894)
Well, funny enough, we're about 11 years in and we've actually just hired a full -time new business development person to work alongside my partner Bob, who is also, you know, that's really primarily his charge is business development. So we're little late in the game, but it's great because, you know, she joined us three, four months ago and already just having someone just totally focus on working like our HubSpot CRM
and she's kind of organizing our own efforts around LinkedIn outreach and so forth. It's getting traction and we're starting to see a lot more prospects in the pipeline and we're getting a lot of meetings and thankfully we've been converting a lot of new clients. So we're in this process right now where like our client roster is really getting a pretty big refresh.
Justin Levinson (24:52.954)
That's really exciting. When you do get a client that's potentially interested in you, how do you typically pitch to them? Do have a PowerPoint or is there, or how does it sort of work with like if I was your potential, what does that sort of look like when you speak to somebody like
Jeremy Schwartz (25:19.148)
Yeah, I mean, you know, we love telling our story. We love telling the story of what we believe in. And it does start usually with we try to keep those meetings really conversational. We've got a credentials deck that tells our story and what we believe in that I think we can do in six or seven minutes. It's you know, we don't want we believe that the more effective meeting is when we can.
give them a foundation of who we are, give them a good strong back story of what we believe in, but then get them talking. So we have this, we actually switched totally over to Google Suite because of for all the collaboration that was required, especially in the last four five years. But the G docs are really great because we can collaborate on decks simultaneously between the account team, the creative team, and the strategy team.
that GDOT credentials is a key to tell our story of what we believe in. Then we tailor it, depending on who the prospect is. And especially if we know what they need, whether it's something like brand identity or brand activation, like campaign development, we can kind of skew our story a little bit to those different avenues. And then we usually try to put some insights right into our
about the category and you know, it's really great, especially when we can do a little bit of a strategic dig and maybe show them that we already have some insights that maybe they're not even aware of and they're working in the category each and every day. So it really kind of depends on, you know, how big that pitch is and what we're willing, you know, how much we invest in it. But we always really love to put some prompts in there to get them speaking because those meetings are really successful when we can hear them
and hear what their challenges are from their point of view, not just agency folks talking
Justin Levinson (27:14.928)
Totally. Now that makes a lot of sense. It's nice to of like listen to the problems and see what the pain points are, how you can create a solution. Yeah, I think that sometimes in a lot of selling, a lot of times people get caught up in me, me, me, me, me, opposed to kind of being listening where the old adages we were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. And sometimes being a good listener can pay dividends.
Jeremy Schwartz (27:39.49)
Yeah.
Jeremy Schwartz (27:44.694)
Yeah, in certain opportunities, we might have like really good case studies that kind of like walk them through our process that might be really similar to some of their challenges. You know, really just depends on who we're speaking to and what that challenge
Justin Levinson (27:58.478)
I mean, you're typically competing against a number of different agencies on how does that sort of work?
Jeremy Schwartz (28:05.294)
Yeah, I mean, I would say that most of these conversations, when you know that someone is really in need of agency services, there usually is a roster of agencies that they are speaking to. It's always better. We'd rather know that it's a shorter list rather than a longer list. I mean, we have taken part in conversations with brands, and then we find out that they're speaking to 12 or more agencies. And you're like, wow,
You know, we usually have to be a little careful of like how much we're going to put into it when it's a numbers game like that. But, you know, I think that the marketers who've been around the block, really savvy marketers, they, you know, especially ones that maybe have even worked on the agency side. I think that they're the ones that kind of tend to keep those discussions down to just a small handful of agencies where you feel like you really have a shot and you will put our best foot forward or invest.
in doing so when we know that there's a better chance of winning. It's tough when all of a sudden, sometimes we've even spoken to some governmental bodies and there's 20 different agencies in it. So you just have to sort of be careful about how much you're gonna invest because the likelihood's a
Justin Levinson (29:24.058)
Yeah, no, that really does make sense. I guess maybe pivoting the conversation just a little bit in terms of just what is going on in the whole world and especially in the advertising agency space. I know I do a lot of work in entertainment as well and obviously there's been so many things going on with the strikes and of course the pandemic
Jeremy Schwartz (29:48.238)
Mm -hmm.
Justin Levinson (29:51.372)
lot of consolidation and there's been many, many different things that I'm sure have trickled down into out of into all agencies. And with those issues, you know, how do you how are you kind of seeing things going on, you know, on your end? Where do you kind of see this industry moving?
Jeremy Schwartz (30:11.254)
man, I mean, there is a lot of change. I think one of the things that we really saw even before the whole world was disrupted by COVID, that was this trends towards in -housing. In -housing was something that we've seen it, we've watched it happen over the years. So instead of us, I don't know, just rebelling against it, we really did decide to embrace it. We sort of understood that maybe there was a role
that it doesn't have to be an either or situation. A lot of our clients today have their own internal communication staff and creative abilities. But we've really geared a lot of our services to be a great complement to that. Like sometimes just a client knows that like working with an outside agency can sometimes provide like a really interesting outside perspective that
bogged down by all the internal rules that people feel are in place. We get to objectively break some rules. But we really, I think, have understood that there's some times to lead and then there's some times to partner. So we actually discuss that one of our capabilities is agency integration. And those agency integration can be with the in -house teams. It can also be with
specialty agencies in a roster of agencies that might be servicing the clients. So that's been really a significant change. Then of course we've got technology changes, especially in the last year, the proliferation of AI tools is really changing, I think, what clients are looking for for agencies to do. Because in many cases, they're doing, like their smaller teams are doing a lot. They're maintaining
their communications with these newer tools. But, you know, I still think that there's, there'll always be a place for creatives and strategists and really great account people to build trust because you have to understand people. And I think for a good long time, people are going to understand people better than these AI tools. Now there's a lot that we can do to make mundane tasks go a lot quicker.
Jeremy Schwartz (32:30.422)
and we can kind of generate larger volumes of work in a faster way. But I think those core ideas are still going to be the winners for a while. So the technology changes that we're incorporating are still kind of back a house changes. It's not really about what we're putting out into the market on behalf of the clients that we're working for. But, you know, that's going to change as these tools get stronger and the industry starts figuring out some of
the trademark issues and you know, because we're makers and you we know that there's a lot of sensitivity about these tools and how they're being perceived to steal from other makers. So we're just trying to not be ignorant that these tools are coming, but we have to use them in a
Justin Levinson (33:20.974)
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense to me. And it's interesting what you're saying about the in -house and how you're working more as you're working in partnership with them as almost as you're an extension of their company, which I really like that idea. And it is interesting about the separation too. know with, one of my passions is music.
Jeremy Schwartz (33:37.27)
Absolutely.
Justin Levinson (33:48.452)
And I know that sometimes when I'm creating something and I have invested in it, I really only hear it my way. sometimes when you are able to pass that along to a different set of ears, can really, there's a lot of things that can, know, things can go wrong, but there's a lot of times it can be like you get those aha moments where like, wow, I didn't hear that. That's really cool.
So I can see why sometimes a fresh set of ears can really make a difference in how something is advertised. And I also like going back to how you were an extension of, or I sort of made the analogy that you were sort of an extension of the company itself. I also in the recruiting world, I noticed that that's also a change that I'm seeing as well, where external third party
partnering with internal recruiters, working together opposed to bickering over things. By working together, it really makes the product, it makes everything better when everyone is really working together cohesively. It's not this territorial thing. And if you can find that synergy, I think that's the holy grail. So I really enjoyed hearing
Jeremy Schwartz (35:13.794)
Yeah, because I think so many marketers today, mean, first of all, they're doing more than ever before. I mean, I think a lot of times their job descriptions used to be handled by two or three people. So they've got a lot on their plate and they just want to work with people who are there to solve problems, not get territorial. And it's great to hear that that's happening in your space as well, because I think, you know, if you are that person who wants to keep everyone at arm's length or just protect your scopes, I think ultimately,
you're probably, you might find yourself outside of that relationship one day. think, you know, it's been great. Like I said, becoming an extension of those brands. And by the way, it's gone the other way. Sometimes our brands, the in -house team has gotten to work almost like they're an extension of our team. They get to be creative directed by myself or one of my other creative leaders here to kind of just get out of
regular day to day of whoever they're reporting to. And I think that that also can kind of just shake things up and give them a little bit more license to try some
Justin Levinson (36:21.892)
Yeah, that's really cool. As far as the kind of like technology that we were sort of touching on a little bit and how sort of AI is impacting everything. guess what is, you know, as far as like, I guess maybe it doesn't have to be on the AI side, but in terms of like technologies, what sort of things do you guys find is working for you? Not necessarily AI driven, but any sort of things that you guys use that have been effective for
Jeremy Schwartz (36:52.706)
man, that's a pretty loaded question. But, you know, like first of all, yeah. So I mean, on the design side, I mean, obviously I've been Adobe geek for decades now, but we did bring Figma into our workflow for, not just for the user experience and digital design work, but we're actually using it to quickly prototype lots of different types of communications.
Justin Levinson (36:55.478)
Yeah, give me everything you got.
Jeremy Schwartz (37:18.346)
It's just a really seamless tool. It's great for collaboration amongst teams. You know, we can have multiple designers on one thing, sharing references, actually designing on the very same layout. It's a really, really cool tool, but it is really great for the folks who are working on digital design and user experience. But then on the AI side, like, you know, I think I touched on it, where there's a lot of mundane tasks that need to get
note -taking, transcribing, and our account team used to have to handle all of that, and now that is happening almost instantaneously with some of these new tools. And of course, on the creative side, certain things like retouching is happening a lot faster with some of the generative AI fill -type tools that Adobe is bringing right into Illustrator and Photoshop.
You know, and we're playing around with that. And then, you know, everyone's making a lot of content, both for themselves, for their own agency, as well for their clients. And I think that like, through some of these, you know, know, chat GPT and other large language models, and some things that are more tailored to the industry, we're getting from blank page to something quicker. Now, I think that something needs to get tweaked and massaged
You've got to have to, I think you put your human spin on it. But it is really nice to just sort of play around, you know, and chat GPT and sort of like, well, you know, do some prompts and all of a sudden you've got a page of, you know, or of an outline or at least an approach. And then you kind of see the flaws in those approaches and then you start tweaking it. And of course, you know, I think some folks here are using Mid Journey to just play around with some visual ideation.
And then that visual ideation might turn into something much more robust when they start wrapping their creative brains around it. So yeah, there's a lot going on. There's a lot of tools, a lot of options out there. We've actually been working on AI homework assignments for our team where we're giving our teams assignments. And not only just to use AI tools, but to document their process so we can all learn from what's working and what's not working. And then that is, you
Jeremy Schwartz (39:43.616)
Our goal is by Q4 is that we have a very specific process for like, these are the tools we love, this is how we do it. And then, you know, we'll see how that starts affecting our creative.
Justin Levinson (39:58.734)
Yeah, that is really cool. I like that idea a lot. Well, I got two more questions for you. One thing that I noticed while was snooping about you was your company that you have called Punxies. Punxels, I'm sorry. missed, yeah, pardon the error. Punxels, yeah. I do see that I made that mistake in my notes.
Jeremy Schwartz (40:12.512)
It's actually, it's punk souls. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Justin Levinson (40:25.008)
And I'm sure when you tell me about it now, it's going to make a lot more sense why that is called punxels. So yeah, can you tell me about that a little bit?
Jeremy Schwartz (40:29.774)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So Punxels was a bit of my COVID baby. But around the time, you know, back in 2020, 2021, we were, we were very interested in wondering if the agency could support more lines of business beyond just serving clients on an hourly basis. And we kind of had this idea that we, you know, what if we created a company that could be a little bit of R and D?
for the agency of like, we get to try things out when we're the client. And I just happened to have this idea, because we were sitting there in COVID, my wife and I actually got a couple of jigsaw puzzles. I'm not a total jigsaw puzzle nerd, but I was really frustrated that I couldn't find cool puzzles to put together. I enjoyed it. And then one night, you know, and I'm a big music fan as well, and I grew up listening to a lot of punk rock.
And just this literally that conjoint of punk and puzzles came together in my mind. And all of a sudden, like I was just thinking about it this night. And I said, like, why not have a puzzle that could be of a really cool image of a musician? Maybe like the old vinyl albums that came with liner notes, you could read a whole story about that musician. And maybe there would be associated, you know, playlists.
Like we could make it an experience. So I came in the next morning, I had furiously written up a bunch of notes, you know, that night. And I came in the next morning and I told my partners this idea and they said, it sounds really interesting. You know, it was risky because, you know, we were thinking about the puzzle category, like does punk music fans and puzzling fans, what's the pull there? And that, you know,
we gave ourselves the challenge, could we actually, instead of pulling puzzle fans to punk, could we actually pull punk and other types of music fans to puzzling as an activity? So we launched punksles pretty quickly, which was a great experience because I was learning not just about the branding that we do every day and the design that we do every day, but I had to figure out every single part of launching a product, you
Jeremy Schwartz (42:53.742)
from prototyping and manufacturing to getting the product here. It gave us a real opportunity to play around with some e -commerce platforms. We built a Shopify site, which we had never done before as a company. So it was fulfilling that need to sort of R &D. So like all of a sudden we were working on sort of a youth lifestyle oriented brand or a music lifestyle oriented brand. We're playing around with tools that we had
you know, use before like, you know, various e -commerce platforms. You know, we were just kind of playing in new categories. We played with some influencer marketing. We were bringing just new things to this brand. We put out a couple of products. That being said, you know, I'm also realizing it's hard to split my time. You know, like I am an agency, you know, managing partner of an agency.
you know, running that successfully, and then also trying to be a marketer at the same time. So it's been a great, it's been a great little experiment. But, you know, I was finding that my, my manufacturing and supply chain out of China was getting is was a little less stable than I want it to be. So it looks like I'm going to kind of wrap up the project.
But along the way, like it did exactly what it was supposed to do. It taught us a lot about being a marketer. It gave us some opportunity to play around with different communication tools. And I met some great people along the way. Like my product is sold at the Punk Rock Museum in Las Vegas. You know, I've been meeting small little indie shops all around. It taught me a little bit about getting products on Amazon. It's been a really cool.
Justin Levinson (44:35.418)
Cool.
Jeremy Schwartz (44:45.358)
cool product, but you know, I'm in this business because I love what I'm doing here at the agency and I just want to be a little bit more focused
Justin Levinson (44:53.174)
Yeah, but what a cool thing to be able to kind of experience both parts of the business, creating the product and then marketing it yourself, getting to kind of flex those muscles. That's pretty cool. Yeah, for the last question, I guess I'd like to see, do you have any advice that you would give for aspiring agency owners, maybe people that are, maybe at the point where they're,
a top performer in their creative agency and they might be thinking themselves, hmm, I might be able to do this myself. Is there any advice for them?
Jeremy Schwartz (45:30.232)
Well, yeah, I mean, first of all, you can do it. mean, I was really, it was wild when we first started off to sort of understand how little we needed to actually become an agency. mean, yes, you've got to put some, you know, an operating agreement in place. You need to sort of get yourself out there legally as, you know, some sort of incorporated entity. So there's a little bit of investment in some legal stuff. You know, it's great to have a great banking relationship.
But man, we bought three Macs, we got a Dropbox account, and we were off and running. Because you need a great story. mean, of course, there's all that. You need a story. had a little bit of history in the business that we could tell who we worked for in the past. But it's a really low cost of entry to actually get in versus other sectors that need huge capital investment.
You know, the real advice that I would say, and I think we've talked about it a little bit in this discussion is about change, is that you have to embrace change. I was really surprised, especially in the first five years, it felt like the business was evolving on a really fast timeline. It was like, it almost felt like we were completely different every six months. And that was really surprising to me. And I bet you that would continue today with,
the way, you know, all the opportunities in which clients can get their marketing services done and the tools that are out there. But you just have to embrace change. You have to be flexible. You know, I think a lot of times I see other entrepreneurs get out there and start companies and they've got a very stubborn view of what they're going to do. And if they don't, if they don't bring that flexibility to it, they could get left behind because things
are evolving pretty rapidly. Just because it's changing doesn't mean that it's bad. It means that like, think of all the things that we've been embracing in the last handful of years between in -office work versus remote work, the tools we're using, it's wild amount of change. And I think you just have to be
Justin Levinson (47:47.472)
Cool, man. Well, Jeremy, I really appreciate your time today and doing this podcast with me, and I look forward to continue follow your journey. And yeah, man, thanks so much for being
Jeremy Schwartz (47:59.48)
Thanks, Justin. I really enjoyed it. And thanks for the conversation. yeah, hopefully we'll be collaborating again real soon.
Justin Levinson (48:06.306)
All right, man, have a great rest of your week and be well. All right, man, cheers, bye.
Jeremy Schwartz (48:09.826)
You too, take care.
Agency Side host and the creative matchmaker extraordinaire at Coming Up Creative. Connecting top talent with leading agencies by day, uncovering industry secrets by night (well, whenever we record).