Matthew Flint: From Acting to Creative Finishing Leader

Justin Levinson (00:00.706)

Hey everybody, welcome to the Agency Side podcast. Today I'm here with Brett Banker from X and O and we're really excited to hear about what he does in the creative agency space. Thank you so much for being on the show here, Brett.

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Brett Banker (00:15.178)

My pleasure.

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Justin Levinson (00:17.046)

Yeah, so I'll tell you that I originally was interested in speaking with you because I was following you on LinkedIn and following your content, which I found was very interesting. And then of course, I went into looking at your work and your company, which led me to twisting your arm for getting you to come here onto the pod. So maybe you can just give a quick introduction to just explain to the listeners.

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in sort of in a nutshell, what you do at X and L.

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Brett Banker (00:51.393)

So ExxonO is a marketing communications company. We don't really call ourselves an agency because we work quite different. We are a network of experts that sprint towards client questions, challenges, problems in three to four weeks, which is quite different than the way an agency typically works, right? Which is they sign up a scope of work for a year and they staff it. We have no staff. We are.

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only expert level, C level, working top to top with senior marketing leaders to solve their challenges in a way that removes a lot of the hierarchy, a lot of the levels, the layers, and certainly the time.

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Justin Levinson (01:28.246)

Yeah. How did you get into this particular space?

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Brett Banker (01:32.255)

Well, I was studying marketing as a young kid. I always knew I wanted to be in advertising. So I, I'm an agency monogamist. spent 15 years at Gray in New York and eight at a novel in New York. So two agencies in my career. So it was something I always wanted to do. as you...

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As you get more senior in the business, you start to get, you just get pulled away from the thing that you got into it to do, which is to stop, solve business challenges with creativity and strategy. and what we've, what I found is that I get most exhilarated in, the pitch process and you go, well, why is that? Why is it that I get so excited about a pitch? Well, one it's, it's new and it's fresh.

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But it's all the other things that surround that, which is the problem definition is typically quite clear because a client, if they're going to go through that process, they're pretty rigorous about the brief and make sure they know exactly what they're asking for. You're working with senior folks on your side and you're working direct to like the C level on the client side. So you've got experienced people on both ends and it's a decisive process. know, decisions are made quickly. There's not a lot of time to belabor it. It moves fast. I wanted to bottle that up.

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and go, how do we do that over and over again, which is interesting, new, sticky challenge from a client, solve that in a month, and then go to the next one, and go to the next one, and go to the next one. And that was one of the reasons why XNO was born.

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Justin Levinson (03:02.636)

Yeah, that's cool. was checking your stuff out and it seemed that, I mean, obviously, giving quality, doing quality work is paramount, but I also noticed a lot on speed and sort of delivering faster than a lot of what these bigger agencies, you know, kind of do. And I also had read that like decisiveness was a big, the big thing that you really liked. And I totally understand because it was like, yeah, you know, what makes

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Brett Banker (03:25.867)

I love that word.

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Justin Levinson (03:31.822)

a great client. It's not always I mean, sure, we all like clients that pay really well and are doing really exciting stuff. But I do, I can understand that about the size of decisiveness. Like sometimes it's just like, do you like that pair of shoes? Or do you not like that pair of shoes? Because there's just not a lot of a lot of time sometimes. And it's just it can be kind of frustrating. Sometimes you just have to really so maybe you can describe how that

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Brett Banker (03:47.21)

Yep.

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Brett Banker (03:57.281)

Yeah, well, look, I say all the time, and this goes both ways, but to me, the best relationships that I've ever had in the business world with a client and the ones we seek out now at X and O, and we reflect this on ourselves, is decisiveness, ambition, and kindness. And if we can work with all three of those and get that in return, we just know we're going to be successful. We typically are. And we look back now, in 45, 50 projects deep in two plus years.

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And the ones that are the most successful have all three of those because we're being treated differently. It's not transaction. We actually, don't mind that it's a transactional issue. I should take that back. It's just treated with respect and kindness and not like a vendor, like go do this thing. We're going to be successful if you give us the question, allow us to go bring back.

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the answers and give us the time to go think about it. And then be really decisive at the points at which we need decisions made so that we can work at the pace that we're built to work at. And typically most clients want to work at. And I don't ever look back at my agency time and point the finger squarely at them because it's on both sides.

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If you were to go to chat GPT or Claude and say, what's the average client agency marketing timeline? It will give you a 12 week timeline and four weeks to develop the brief and the strategy and six weeks or four weeks to develop the creative with multiple rounds and then six or 10 weeks to go produce it. It's just what we've come to accept. And we just need to disrupt that. And there's the only reason why we accept it is because both sides go, well, that's, guess the way it should be. Um, and.

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But then you just look at all the pressure points on both ends. The agencies want to work quickly so they can get to the next brief and the next challenge. And the clients need to get the work out in the world. But we just tend to get wrapped up in some of the complacency of time and say, that's OK. We have the time. Let's give it. Versus, no, imagine if we can do 12 weeks of work in three or four. And what this model is proving is you can do it.

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Justin Levinson (06:02.574)

That's awesome. What does it look like? Maybe you can walk me through when a client first comes to you or you reaching out to them. I guess it's probably maybe a mix of both. What that kind of looks like maybe from the beginning.

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Brett Banker (06:14.337)

It sure is.

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Brett Banker (06:20.629)

Yeah, mean, look, the first step is chemistry, get to know each other, share our model and how we work, which is what I've just shared with you and how we typically operate in our time frame. Bringing experts in, our experts are typically anonymous, which gives them...

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the opportunity to think unencumbered, right? proverbial headphones go on, we don't bother them, they don't have to rock up to four meetings, they just get to think. So we give them a sense of how we operate. Typically, that's received well, because most clients, you know, when we started XNO, we met with a lot of CMOs and old clients and agency folks that we knew from our past, just to get a sense of the insights and trends that we were feeling were being felt on all sides. And what we heard most consistency was like, I want

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Big ideas and big answers and I need them fast and I just don't care as much where they come from anymore. They can come from the team that sits next to me or they can come from an agency or a team I bring in for a week or that asks someone to sit next to me. So that's the most consistent thing is I need it fast and I want it to be great. So as we give them a sense of how we work, they tend to like that because that's what they need, great work and they need it fast and they want to pay less money and that is what we offer.

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And then the next question or it could be a follow-up meeting, what we tell them is like, what are the things keeping you up at night? What are the challenges or opportunities that either sit outside of the competency of the agencies or the teams that you currently work with? What are the things that if you give this to your current partner, they're at capacity and they will literally tip over if I give them one more thing? Or.

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People have taken a crack at this and we can't quite solve it. It literally keeps coming back and back and back to me.

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Justin Levinson (08:04.908)

Are some of the people maybe jaded on previous experiences with other companies or maybe they've worked with some bigger...

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Brett Banker (08:09.569)

Yeah, yeah, sometimes they are. think the benefit for us is that in that follow up chatter can happen in our first meeting with a client. It's even if that sense of jadedness is there, this is such a different model, which is you are not going to be passed off to junior and mid level teams. You know what, what clients, one of their biggest gripes is I

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I meet agencies, maybe I go through a pitch process. I buy Justin and the Levenson agency and I meet Justin and I meet his other two partners. And then six months later, I'm seeing Justin less and less and I'm seeing those partners less and less because you've built a team of 15 or 20 that run the day-to-day business. And then you know how it works. We're off putting out the next buyer, winning the next pitch, running the company.

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That doesn't happen at XNO because you're only working with expert C-level talent in our expert network and myself and Eric, my co-partner and co-founder.

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are at every step of the process. So you don't ever lose touch with the expertise. And I think that's just a big difference. And it's hard for an agency to replicate that because they're scaling with their clients. So as they grow, they want bigger clients. And what used to be a $1 million scope of work was massive. Five years later, it's the $5 million scope you're chasing. Now you need a team of 20 to run that, or the 10 million that you need 30.

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And clients are used to that. They're used to it becoming this massive team where, know, I might see this C-suite level folks and the people I fell in love with three times a year, you know, either when it's on fire or for a big check-in, right? Or there's just a big seminal moment for the brand. And I think that's what's made them jaded. And we can just promise that that won't happen. And that's typically what that second chat is like, is like, just think of what are some of those problems? And unsurprisingly, there's usually...

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Justin Levinson (09:47.917)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (10:03.389)

If not in our first creds meeting, if not then the second one, there is a three or four that flow out. And they're all pretty consistent. It's what does my brand stand for positioning? What's the big enduring platform?

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creatively that this will, you know, my brand can sit on for the next five years. What's the big campaign? What's the, what's the forward facing communication? It could be, don't know my audience that well. You know, how do I get a better understanding of who I'm selling to? Or it could be a big business strategy question. How do I make my innovation pipeline more,

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because I'm innovating five products a year and four of them are flops. Why is that, right? So we tend to get like, or the one we get a lot now too as well, which is a little further downstream in communication is, can you bring me some ideas that are gonna ripple through culture and not things that go in traditional channels. So I'm not looking for a TV spot. I don't need a big digital campaign. I need a brand act, a stunt, a behavior, like something that we can say, do or put in the world that defies

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finds our position, but that is really going to spread through conversation in the internet, get people talking about us. They're looking for earned media because that tends not to cost much. So we're getting that cut.

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Justin Levinson (11:18.926)

Were you thinking of some of these sort of differentiators with speed and with like client facing being that point of contact? Were these all sort of ideas that you had when you were working in other agencies in the past and saying like, I wish it had been this way.

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Brett Banker (11:33.825)

Yeah, mean a couple of big things are what I always wanted to do was create an accordion style financial model that could expand and contract with client needs and be like Responsive to their business. We'd have clients say to us in the past or I have that are like Look, I'm paying you X amount every month It's a consistent one year scope of work, but in actual and you have the same team roughly over that year

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But in all honesty, my business is on fire in February and March. So in those moments, I feel like you're understaffed and you're not really ready to serve me. And then in July, August, it's quiet and I'm kind of making up things for you to do because I'm paying you the same amount every month. And I'm like, that's not a good financial model. I wanted to build something that could be turned on and turned off like a light switch. And that's what XNO is. It's a, because we have this network at the ready,

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and they span from marketing side folks, so we have ex-CMOs and innovation officers and growth officers that have never stepped foot in an agency. They're marketing experts. And then as you would expect, many creative and strategic experts from the agency side, but then people that are really specific and vertical and channel, some that know web three and AI better than others, and then those that can really get stuck in on a CSR campaign and corporate responsibility, which is a very specific expertise.

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people are at the ready in a network, ready for an email or a call to say, I've got a thing that's perfect for you, we can assemble the team of ninjas in a couple of days. And it's usually from call to proposal to working, and sometimes a week. And agencies can't really operate that way. They play a game of availability, not suitability.

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And our goal was, one, to answer this question, the first thing was the financial model. I want to be able to turn it on and off so we can go, we're going to sprint against that problem for this money for this many weeks, and then we're we're off. And if that has to go through your system or go into testing, you're not paying me while that's happening. You're not looking to pay me for other things just to keep you busy. We're off. And there's great efficiency there for clients. So that was one of the big driving factors for me and Eric.

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Brett Banker (13:51.457)

And then the other was this availability versus suitability. When you're in an agency, you can talk to a lot of people. Most of them will go, man, I am 125 % allocated in my hours and time, which unless you're going to find some way that AI can untap another 25 % of our brain, that's just not plausible, right? There's only 100 % of you that you can give in your time. So when a new project would come in,

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Justin Levinson (14:03.074)

Yeah

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Brett Banker (14:18.953)

You're like, you know, head of departments that Eric and I both were, you're like rearranging deck chairs. You're like, this person's perfect. But man, if I pull them off, the other three things are on, they're pivotal to those things. So they're not, I can't. So then you have to go down the line and maybe you find someone who's not perfect, but they're available. So that's the person that gets put on it. We don't ever have to play that game. We get to build the perfect team based on expertise because all the folks in our network are freelance. They're, no one has a full-time job. They're all.

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Ideally waiting for that, you know, they have their own gigs that they take in personally through their companies, but when we ring them up...

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and say we have the perfect job for you, what we ask is that they're fully dedicated over the time we're asking. And that's also a massive difference. And if you've worked in an agency, you feel that. You're like, man, I wish I had more time from Justin's brain. But Justin's on four other things. So now when you go back to that question earlier about time, there's no wonder why an agency's not delivering in three weeks. Rather, they're delivering in three months. Because you have 20 % of all the team's brains. Because most people are spread across multiple

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things. And we really wanted to build a model I have for a while that got 100 % focus of experts and that's really hard to do within an agency.

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Justin Levinson (15:39.182)

It sounds like another innovation that you've created here is your creative resourcing and how you've been able to manage that and find people. know, you know, obviously I do a lot of recruitment in the agency space. I know that creative resourcing is not always easy, but it seems like you guys have sort of found some of the secret sauce. How do you go? I mean, you don't have to give away the secret sauce, but is there a...

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you know, maybe what some of the are the keys that you look for when you're hiring or how you have maybe built up some of your, your roster if you're open to talking about that.

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Brett Banker (16:19.073)

Yeah, well, I'll be humble enough to say we have no secret sauce. We've cracked nothing. It's a really big part of our...

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every day, which is continually looking for new folks to bring in the network, not necessarily to expand, but because the attrition rate for us is always going to be high because we don't moonlight people, meaning you can't have a job, full-time job and work at X and O because to my previous point, when you come on a project, we're asking that you're fully dedicated, if not close to fully dedicated. So if you have a full-time job, we can't get, you know, most of your brain day after day on a project.

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so when someone is in the network and that capacity working as a freelance owns and decides the allure of going back to the brand side or the agency side is too strong and I'm taking a new CCO role, they're no longer, they become inert in our network. So the, the job for us is always filling up that coffer of great talent. we're lucky that both Eric and I have spent a quarter of a century in the business, you know, working at some, some of the best.

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agencies in the world. So we've had and had the opportunity to work next to and around incredible talent in our careers. But it's it is a constant constant job. And I would say to your question, though, what do we look for? I think the most important thing is a shared DNA that they have and we have, which is

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the agency to make quick decisions. I've done this before. We're really looking for people and the company in terms of talent and the foundation is the 10,000 hours principle. It's like, I have many people that reach out and say, man, I wanna be a part of the X and O network and they're a copywriter and they're five years in. And my response is always, I'm sure you're amazing at what you do, but we're betting on experience here. And that's not to diminish how good you are at your job, but you've only done it.

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Brett Banker (18:14.187)

for 3,000 hours and we're looking for the 10. But we're looking for people that have that shared DNA because they have that experience to go, man, I've solved this problem before. This is just a new brand with a different context. But I've built the positioning 150 times for brands of all shapes and sizes. So to build this brand's positioning is there's just codes in your brain that allow you to short circuit to the answers. As long as you're given a clear brief from us and all the information you need from the brand to really understand their

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context, you can get to that answer very quickly. So we're looking for people that want to work that way, that have the agency and the confidence to go and the mettle to say, you want me to write a positioning in five days? We're typically I've done that in 20. Okay, I can do that. Just don't put anything else in front of me. Let me focus on that one thing and I'll do it. But honestly, not everyone's wired that way. Some people want to

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sit in it, you know, they want to ruminate in the problem. And that's okay, but that's not what works on the Exynosa. You have to be like really comfortable, many times working by yourself to crack a problem. So that's probably the biggest thing we look for is like that shared DNA of like, man, I'm, I'm, I've got it and I want to, I can, move fast. I'm decisive. A lot of what we talked to had at the beginning. And then like,

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Justin Levinson (19:31.276)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (19:33.569)

It's also this, you know, people that have said, I'm kind of done with the working within the big machine and I want to do this thing on my own. We look for those people because we want them to be. This is a, this is a company tip of entrepreneurs, not just myself and Eric, but then a lot of our founders own their own LLC. They are people that have said they were working for the big agency or the big client and said, man, I can do this myself. And they've gone out on their own and done it.

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Justin Levinson (19:41.454)

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (20:01.294)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (20:03.635)

And when you've done that for a few years, you're wired differently now. You move at a different speed, a different pace. You don't let things get in your way. And again, you have agency to go, not just here's the answer, and to defend that answer, but to go, actually, the question you're asking is wrong. To us, to me and Eric, to the client, you asked me for X, I actually think you should be asking for Y. And those are the type of people that we want.

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Justin Levinson (20:30.382)

love it. That's interesting. Maybe you can tell me how I know we've mentioned Eric, but I haven't really given him a tip of the hat yet. So he's he's your partner. That's how did you guys? How did that all happen?

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Brett Banker (20:45.281)

So we have known each other for 19 years now, which is to say that aloud, you're like, God, I'm old. Just because it's not even my whole career in advertising. So we met at Gray in 07, worked together.

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Justin Levinson (20:51.117)

Hahaha

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Brett Banker (20:59.649)

We were both on Diageo but on different brands, so didn't really work together for a few years. And then we came together on the NFL. He was running the creative side, I was running the account business strategy side. So we ran that business for years and then a few TVS, TNT, few entertainment properties. Then he went over to Anomaly. I came over there with him. He ended up running the creative department in New York. I was running the account department.

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And we've, think the thing is what we always say about each other is although he is a CCO and a creative and a writer by trade, and I'm a accountant, business strategist and an ops leader by trade, we both want to do the other side. So I love getting in and writing. I've always been someone who enjoys the writing side and just the creative side of the business. And I get to do more of that now because we're crafting and building answers strategically and creatively ourselves.

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And he's happy digging in on the ops and like really unpacking the problem. Or I'll shame him on this call, like loves to dig into a spreadsheet for an hour and like for a long time is running, you know, our accounts payable when I was doing the receivable. And there's not a lot of big agency CCOs that want to dig in and run finance, but like that's the way Eric's built. We're both.

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Justin Levinson (21:59.768)

Nice.

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Brett Banker (22:13.653)

kind of multi-hyphenate in that way or just get excited about all sides of problem solving. And I think that's important to a partnership like this is that, know, especially when you're building a company, there's no, I do this thing, you do that thing. It's like, no, we do everything. And at any given moment, one of us has to book a meeting or, you know, solve a finance problem or crack a creative problem, right? And that's what's made our partnership, I think, really successful.

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Justin Levinson (22:40.91)

Yeah. Was there a lot of nerves that went involved when you first, I had to make the plunge? How, how was it? How did that feel?

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Brett Banker (22:44.414)

yeah.

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Oh yeah. I'd say personally, and I'll speak for both of us, Eric was swimming in freelance water since 2020. So I think he was in a slightly different position. One, the comfort of, you know, this is now 2022. I've been doing it for two years. It's going to be okay. But for me, you know, I was still at my old agency and I had to resign both to build the company I mentioned earlier before we were online with my wife. And then also this.

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And that's a scary thing when you're in your mid 40s and you have two young kids and a wife and a couple of mortgages to leave the comfort of a salary and a family, know, that I, when I say family, mean, I was at Anomaly for years and I have great reverence for that company and those people. And they treated me very well in my time there. And you have to step away from that and...

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Say I'm going to go build something completely new and from scratch without any salary or revenue, it was scary. And then to the build of it all is can we get, one, can you prove the proposition? Can you move at this pace and deliver quality output that we promise for the money that we believe it's worth but is significantly less expensive than what agencies typically would charge for that?

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That's scary because you're- you're actually, you know, we- I talk a lot about the iron triangle, is, you know, typically it's good, fast, and inexpensive, and you can only have two, right? That's the- that's a prevailing economic principle, and it's certainly one that gets talked about a lot in marketing and advertising, is you- you gotta capitulate on one.

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Brett Banker (24:24.769)

So I can give you great work, I can do it fast, but you're gonna pay through the nose for it, right? Or, you know, you're always gonna, one, you have to sacrifice. And we were going, I think you don't have to sacrifice any of those. And that's scary, because that is a principle that's existed for a very long time. And economists would say it's not really possible in certain places, but in this business you can. And that was frightening. And there's a good reason for why our first year at...

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with X and O out in the world, we got no press. We didn't announce that we were out in the world. Most people use their names to go, hey, so and so and so so have started an agency and they call up the trades and the publications to get some press and start, get the turnstiles moving. But Eric and I didn't do that for a year because we wanted to prove that the model could work before anyone knocked on the door. And that's also scary because then the first six months of the company, were

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Justin Levinson (25:16.13)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (25:21.409)

It was quiet. know, then we didn't have a lot of clients. We were building the foundation of it and the operations of it. But with that, there wasn't a whole lot of money coming in. So, you know, honestly, there was a moment maybe four or five months in where I went, oh my God, I got to, I got to call a recruiter and maybe take a freelance job somewhere. Luckily in the second half of 2023, it really started to gain momentum and we've, really haven't stopped since.

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Justin Levinson (25:44.62)

That's amazing. I mean, I can totally relate on all that feeling. Same thing. I've wife, kids were pretty similar in vintage. And when I went and started my own agency, it was, it was pretty terrifying. I personally, most of my life has been a pretty risk aversive person. I'm a pretty safe, you know, I do everything pretty, pretty safe. don't, involved in extreme sports. I don't spend recklessly. I've always drank and ate in fair moderation.

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Brett Banker (26:01.921)

Mm-hmm.

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Justin Levinson (26:14.35)

I'm a pretty boring guy, I sort of, yeah, know, when I made that move, I also did it to Little Kids Mortgage, all that same stuff. And yeah, I think I can totally, that first year, can be quiet in the beginning and you're ramping up and it's like, man, you'd start, some of those doubts kind of creep in for a minute. But yeah, sometimes it's like once you've sort of hit that like bottom, you know.

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floor and you're like, I'm a little scared. Then all of sudden it starts like pick up and you're like, oh, phew, we're cool.

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Brett Banker (26:44.543)

Yep. And the one thing I would say in any advice to anyone looking to do that in their industry and career is, and this is not.

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This is not advice that would be mind blowing, but it's what carried me through, which was the confidence that we had built something truly unique and differentiating. And then if you've built something that has, you know, is attacking a consumer need, which in our industry, marketers were looking for better work. want a better access to better talent. They want to move faster and they either budgets are shrinking. So it did feel like we were attacking a lot of the pain points.

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And that gave me the resolve to go, there was never really a point where I went, it won't work. It was just a point of, will it start working in time for me not to sell my home or tell my wife we've got to move or tell my kids that we're going to start eating differently. Daddy's not going to be cooking the great meals anymore because yeah, it's peanut butter jelly time, right? And that's the thing that's really scary is like the impact it has on your family and your lifestyle.

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Justin Levinson (27:42.795)

to that.

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Brett Banker (27:54.913)

you work really hard to get to a place of financial security and comfort, and then you greatly disrupt that. it's, you know, I have to, you my wife was incredibly supportive. Like she never, she was scared, but never told me no, never told me this isn't wise. Maybe she told me, you sure? Is this the right moment? And it really wasn't the right moment for us financially. were in the midst of some...

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you know, like a financial upheaval for one of our mortgages that we were being sued on and it was working any revenue from it. It was draining financially. She's like, let's wait till we get past that. We're still not past it two and a half years later. So, and I said to her, like, if not now, then when, right? Like that's always, there's always going to be something that tells you this isn't the right time. Like we are creatures of stability and you just have to like, just.

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Justin Levinson (28:45.923)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (28:49.441)

Again, if you have something that feels like it's unique and it's different and it's going to disrupt an existing model and certainly a model that's ripe for it, then go and figure out if there's a trail of disruption behind you that might mess up what brought you there, then you'll fix it later. That's the way we thought about it.

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Justin Levinson (29:12.364)

Do you, since you've launched your own thing, do you have any, is there any particular projects that you're the most proud of or things you've really enjoyed doing or any sort of, yeah, top things that come to mind?

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Brett Banker (29:26.282)

Yeah, I mean like, you lot of our work, unfortunately, we're so far upstream is not even out in the world yet. You know, sometimes we're a year, year and a half in advance of the work going out in the world. But I think from like a broad perspective, what makes me the most proud is our ability to, which is something that an agency might struggle with because of the budgetary constraints on the client side is like we have the ability of working with startups and Fortune 500s alike.

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Justin Levinson (29:34.552)

Yeah.

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Brett Banker (29:52.693)

because our pricing is fixed and it's not, it's a fraction of what it would cost to work with that talent at an agency. So we've had, you we just wrapped up a great project with a company called Protein 2.0.

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on Protein 2.0, which is a beverage brand that's fortified with protein. But they're a small company that would not have been able to work with and get the output that they got from us, from many other people, because they have a different budget level than a big Fortune 5. But to be able to go end end with them, build a campaign and a platform, we actually went and produced and created some of the assets.

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Like that's when you step back and you're like, man, this can be kind of game changing because of the.

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what the investment and what it costs that company would be, you five times if they went to a traditional agency. So it would have been prohibitive. They wouldn't have done it and they wouldn't get to the type of work. And to be able to impact a company like that is really rewarding. And honestly, was, you know, when I go back to kind, kind, decisive and ambitious, they're that, you know? And, you what we say all the time is we try to match to ambition, not budget. And like, this is a model that allows us to do that.

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that so we can, you know, a lot, we used to get calls at the older, bigger agencies. I got a call, one of them from a, this is 10 years ago, maybe from a streaming service that wanted us to, from a strategic standpoint to like unpack the future of streaming, which is an awesome question, especially 10 years. It was like the future of watching content. And how do we like, how does a network live in that world 10 years from now, which would have been today. And I'm like, what an amazing question.

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Justin Levinson (31:33.388)

Okay.

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Brett Banker (31:35.327)

But the budget was tiny. this agency is like, don't get out of bed for that. That's too small of a number, which I get. Your numbers just change dramatically once you turn into a big agency. And to be able to take on all types of those questions and never turn it down because the money is a problem, that's really rewarding because that's why we're getting a lot of really interesting questions. Yeah. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (31:59.022)

That's awesome. You mentioned the NFL a minute ago. Are you an NFL fan too? know you're working on that.

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Brett Banker (32:04.089)

yeah, I I was always a sports fan, I had the opportunity to run that business at Gray for three years with Eric. I went to three or four Super Bowls and built multiple campaigns for them. So I was always a big fan. But then once you're inside the shield and get to walk through the halls of the office and meet.

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you know, the team up to the commissioner, become, have a different relationship with the shield than, than previous. So since that moment, I've been a massive fan. Yeah. I mean, either way, does it, is it, is it any better? I'm a long, long time Giants fan. I haven't said it to my son yet, but I'm already like apologizing in advance that he is currently a Giants fan, but I am holding on hope.

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Justin Levinson (32:37.198)

Are you a Giants or a Jets fan?

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Justin Levinson (32:42.817)

Hahaha

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Brett Banker (32:55.797)

That we will turn it around. you a Giants fan too?

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Justin Levinson (32:59.918)

I mean, I actually like the Vikings, which is even maybe more of a curse, right? Like from Fran Tarkington to Sam Darnold, really can't, it's pretty heartbreak.

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Brett Banker (33:02.374)

man... Ugh.

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Brett Banker (33:09.907)

and even, even you're literally our last apex is when the giants beat the Vikings in the playoffs three years ago. was our last good moment in the last three.

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Justin Levinson (33:17.838)

Yeah, well, know, at least the Giants had lot of, you know, Eli Manning really brought, like, least the energy of defeating Brady in Super Bowl.

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Brett Banker (33:23.273)

Yeah, we're in a tough, we've been in a tough 10 year stretch, we've got, in my lifetime, they've won four Super Bowls. So that's why I like four, as a Vikings fan, they've never won. Right? So like in history of the team and the league, so like, I feel your pain, man. That's tough. It's tough. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (33:29.429)

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (33:36.138)

Never. History of the team.

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Yeah, I do like I do like football. I'm a bigger baseball fan, to be honest, but I do. You know, I do I do follow the football sometimes it gets a little it's a little it can be a little violent for my liking at times.

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Brett Banker (33:55.049)

Yeah, it can be. And look, I'm a huge baseball fan. Eric and I ran Major League Baseball at Anomaly for years. So that was fun as well. We got a chance to go on that side and use our expertise from NFL and bring it over to MLB.

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Justin Levinson (34:02.488)

cool.

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Justin Levinson (34:10.382)

And you could remain in just as, it has just as much internal pain as maybe a Mets fan. Are you a Mets fan too? Okay, then you're, less pain.

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Brett Banker (34:17.057)

I'm a Yankee fan, so I've got to be thankful for that. Yeah, thank God, man. I was a, yeah, a Met, Eric is a Met fan, and I watch that pain unfold year on year. Yeah, yeah.

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Justin Levinson (34:29.154)

Man, yeah, my family's all Mets fans, and, cause I grew up in Jersey as well. and yeah, they, my parents are still like 86 Mets are still like in their, in their mind, America Mets.

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Brett Banker (34:39.657)

yeah, I mean that's, yeah. And honestly, that was what made me a Yankee fan. My brother was a massive Mets fan when he was young and we were sibling rivalry. And they were so good, the Mets, that they were bad boys. And if you weren't a fan and I started to like the Yankees, you almost start to dislike them because they win all the time. And they were so good in 86, 87, 88 that I went to the Yankee side just to butt up against him. Glad I did.

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Justin Levinson (35:08.032)

Okay. Yeah, it turns out you're a few were a bit. Yeah, do you have any other like, you know, outside of sports, any other sort of fun hobbies or things that you? cool.

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Brett Banker (35:08.673)

I can almost thank him. I'm winning. Yeah, exactly.

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Brett Banker (35:21.471)

Yeah, I'm a massive cook. I love food. Yeah, I've been cooking for, God, now it's probably 30 plus years. So I learned a bit growing up from my mom, my grandma, my Nona, Italian side of the family, that's cooking is a big part of culture. So, you know, I always took...

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Justin Levinson (35:39.277)

Nice.

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Brett Banker (35:42.675)

I listened and I learned a little bit from both of them. But then once I got out of college, I'd be the one in, you know, living with two roommates. I'd always love to mess around and cook in the kitchen. And then I got serious about it in my mid to late 20s and started taking classes in New York and just trying to learn the trade of it a little bit. not the trade, but the, you know, the nuances of it and how to make, learn the foundations of sauces. And, you know, it's like,

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It's no surprise that I like building ideas, right? Cause it's all a soup, you know? probably not, I'm probably at my happiest when I'm making, you know, a stew or like a gravy or a sundae or something that needs ingredients and a bit of time and like the right attention, you know, let that thing sit together because what it starts at is so different than what it finishes as. Um, and I just, I love the amalgamation of things to come together.

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Justin Levinson (36:12.696)

Hahaha

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Brett Banker (36:37.267)

make something and then man to to build something artistic that you can then eat. It's also is also something that I love. I've never been much of an artist. My wife is but you you put that thing up on a wall and it's beautiful to look at but I kind of like eating my art. It's always yeah.

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Justin Levinson (36:43.586)

Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (36:53.762)

Yeah. that's really cool. It's good to have those extra hobbies. mean, obviously mine is playing the music.

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Brett Banker (37:01.065)

Is there is playing music and I love music as well. I told you I played in my past, but I'd love to get back to that. I actually just asked my son, would you like to take a dad and son guitar lessons? Because I played for seven or eight years in my youth, so I still remember it. I can still re-cheat music, but I've just lost all the speed and the Intuit and the ear. So I need to get that back, but I'd love to get that back in my life.

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Justin Levinson (37:27.618)

Yeah, it's really, yeah, I just love doing it. I love listening to music. I've always been interested in getting involved more into like putting music into film and TV and stuff like that. That's always been a long-term goal of mine. I'm still hanging out. The rock and roll dream may have faded at this point in my life, but it's always something, you know?

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Brett Banker (37:40.789)

Yeah. Yeah.

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Brett Banker (37:46.131)

It's, yeah, there's always an outlet. There's always, there's always, you can find that spark somewhere. Yeah.

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Justin Levinson (37:53.39)

Totally. Well, Brett, it's really been a pleasure having you on and chatting with you today and having this conversation. I think offered a lot of great value to the folks that have been listening in the creative agency community. And I'd love to have you on again in the future sometime and hear more about how things are going. And yeah, we're really happy to have you on. So thank you for being here today.

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Brett Banker (38:16.041)

man, I'm really appreciative that you've given me the time. can't believe that was already almost 45 minutes, but I'm more than happy to come back and hopefully next time I can share not just some of where we're headed, but maybe some of the places that we went to that weren't right. I will say that what's kept us consistent is that we stayed true to our values and our vision. we haven't, from what we concepted XNO to be three years ago has deviated very, very little, if not.

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It was almost zero. And I think that's one of the reasons why we've, I think, seen some success is that we've a really strong position and foundation in the market. We've never really deviated from it. So, yeah, maybe next time I can tell you about whether we're still staying true to that and where we're headed next.

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Justin Levinson (38:58.222)

Awesome man, we'll really appreciate it and have a great weekend and look forward to future conversations with you. All right, man. Cheers. Bye.

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Brett Banker (39:05.889)

Thanks Justin, you as well. Cheers.

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