[00:02]
We do intentionally try and defy the traditional agency model and all of the folks on our team are there because they’re like-minded in that way. So I think all of us kind of gathering and unifying around that one calling has been really great in these growth spurs for everybody to be like, “Okay, we’re going to rally because this is going to have to be different or we’re going to have to reshape the way that we do things in in this way or that way.” I have no fear of failure.

[00:24]
I mean, it happens part of life and I would rather go into a meeting and try to wrangle it and and get us to the end goal, then to walk out with nothing. For me, a lack of a decision is a bigger failure than making a decision that fails later.

[00:46]
It’s been a lot of conversation over the past few years about this idea of the unagency, the idea that medical marketing agencies should be more than just the creative and strategic services that they offer. And that’s why I’m so glad that we’re going to have this conversation station today about the idea of what a non-agency and un-agency can be in practice. And I’m so glad that I’m joined today by two of the leaders at Princeton 10. I’m Rachel Stoll. I am a managing partner of growth and innovation at Princeton 10.

[01:15]
Dave Brous and I am the managing partner head of creative at Princeton 10. I’m Jack O’Brien, managing editor of MM+M. This is the MM+M Agency 100 Strategies for Success podcast with Princeton10.

[01:30]
Let’s start with the basics for those in our line who may not be familiar with Princeton 10. What is Princeton 10? How is it founded? What is it due? Like give us the 35,000 foot view. Absolutely. So Princeton 10 was founded about seven years ago now and it was founded by Marco Sanchez, who’s the principal managing partner.

[01:49]
He kind of had a vision that started and stemmed from kind of what’s flawed with advertising and advertising agencies and marketing and advertising at large, the relationships with clients the way advertising agencies operate, especially the larger ones. So his vision was kind of stemming from that. How do we create something that is unique in nature, something that steers away from the traditional model of marketing and advertising in our space, and thus P10 was founded.

[02:17]
We started off as more of a consultative, kind of strategy-oriented organization that helped people set the foundation for what they wanted to go do with their agencies in terms of execution and And over time, Marcos welcome myself and James Thomasino into the mix as managing partners and I brought the creative side of the business and James brought the tech side of the business.

[02:41]
And uh from there we started doing the more execution oriented work and uh just continued to expand from there but we started off just a couple guys in the garage kind of and uh kind of just built from there. And you started from a couple guys in the garage and now you are here in our New York podcast studio. So just rising up through the ranks. Yeah. It’s really how I look at it. You made You made an interesting point there about being strategy-oriented and a lot of agencies we talk to have this idea of like we are strategy-led and strategy-is our everything.

[03:09]
But what does that really look like in practice for Princeton 10? How do you actually take that mindset and then say, “But this is what we deliver for our clients.” Yeah, strategy is not just a PowerPoint deck. It’s not a deliverable. It’s a It’s a way of thinking for us and how we approach strategy is making sure that we have senior enough people who have lived through enough of campaigns who have had enough failures, who can help guide us through success. Um so from our perspective, a lot Dave’s strategic, right?

[03:38]
He’s a creative director, but I still view him as a as a strategic partner in the business. We have dedicated strategists as well who specialize in brand planning or those other niche topics, but ultimately it’s it’s a culture of strategy. Maybe you know all the guide clients by sitting with them and collaborating on their strategies and making sure that they can be successful navigating their organizations. Excellent. I’m curious to like, you know, there’s obviously 100 agencies on the agency 100 list of all sorts of different varieties.

[04:06]
You have your indie agencies, your PE backed agencies, holding companies. It runs the gamut. In your particular realm, how do you view P10 compared to maybe some of the other small or mid-sized agencies on the list? Yeah, it’s an interesting question. I mean, we’re small and we focus on small to mid-sized clients because we’re inherently just very young in our growth. Uh but we do intend to continue to grow and expand our offerings and so forth.

[04:33]
But uh one of the things that I always loved about the way that we approach the business is that framing that I had mentioned earlier of what do other agencies do that we know are pain points for clients and for people working within the organization as well. So that’s been our vision has always been attacking that like where other agencies go left or where we’ve seen it go wrong by going left or we choose to go right.

[04:58]
So I think we’re we’re young and we’re just getting started, but I feel like we have a good thing working here and we intend on growing, expanding our capabilities and taking on a diverse set of clients, but in that small to mid-size category. I think um, you know, that’s where we fit right now and we’ll continue to grow. Well, and Dave, you say we have only small and mid-sized clients, but that’s not true anymore. Oh, it’s changing rapidly, I isn’t it know. I know.

[05:23]
With the acquisition of my company, you know, we work with um more of the Fortune 500 on the mid-device side. So That’s right. You know, P10 did start out as small and mid-sized, but we have to accept that we do work with the the big guys now. Yes. I and and I want to touch on that too, is the acquisition of Persephone Digital. Talk to me about the thinking behind that deal and then obviously a huge part of any sort of acquisitions then the integration aspect and making it work. Talk to me a little bit about both sides of that equation because it is fascinating.

[05:53]
Yeah, so it was interesting because both companies started at the same time and I had known Marcos from our OmniCom days together. Um we went different paths. He had started Princeton 10. I left my OmniCom job to uh go client side and just didn’t like it. Uh so started freelancing here and there. Um, and ultimately Marcos called with a project and we started working together.

[06:17]
I had so much work I had to hire people and we worked parallel um both with our own clients and as a white label offering through Princeton 10 for quite some time. Um, at some point it just made sense to pull it all together. Uh, we knew we could be stronger together and our social specialty is something P10 really needed. And it took a a little bit for us to get you know everything lined up.

[06:39]
But at the end of the day we were sort of already operating in this integrated agency model and just pulling it all together on the back end for finance was way smarter. Um we can do way more now that we have the combined teams. Yeah, and from an integration perspective, like Rachel’s been part of the family for so long and as her team has been as well. So, the integration part was the easiest part. Um we’ve already been functioning together, operating together. She’s already brought such a diverse lens to the work that we’ve already been doing and uh this only enhances us.

[07:09]
So, it was kind of a no-brainer from both sides. Yeah, it was definitely a no-brainer trainer. Um and then integration was easy, but pulling the two cultures together was different too. We were all remote agencies, but as a social agency, very, very fast, nimble, turning yourself around same day. I mean, hours for clients in some instances and we’re trying to bring more of that to kind of your side of the fence and it’s going to be fun to blend it all together. Yeah. That’s one of my favorite things about Rachel and what she brings to the organization as well. Something we need more of.

[07:39]
We pride ourselves on being nimble, being flexible, being able to do to quick turn around, accomplish the unthinkable for clients and we’ve been really proud of how we’ve been able to operate but Rachel’s only going to help us, continue in that direction, streamline even more processes, it’s even crazy. Getting to meet your team and seeing how you guys do operate in those one day turn around, something taking learnings from that and applying that to some of our larger initiatives as well.

[08:03]
I appreciate you guys on packing that because it is really interesting to see in terms of like here was the thinking, here’s how we’ve integrated and everything like that. I am curious too because you talk about having all this growth. Obviously, I imagine there are some some pain points that come along without some vulnerabilities. What does that been like? Is it not like it’s just all linear like worst on our way to the top? There’s also like feeling things out. What has that been like for the agency? So in six or seven years that I’ve been part of the organization, I think we’ve had like four or five major monumental like growth spurs.

[08:33]
Um you know, we’re operating at very large percentage of increase in revenue every single year. We’re virtually doubling in size over and over and over again and each point has been a place for us to sort of reevaluate. And I think one of the things we pride ourselves on, the leadership team, the managing partners is how do we answer that calling and be comfortable, you know, we’re privately owned. So there’s not anything that we’re bound to. There’s no processes, there’s no ways of doing things.

[09:03]
So we have a constant evaluation process every time we grow a little bit to kind of relook at the way that we’re doing things and being open to being comfortable with, hey, we need to reshape this. We need to rethink the way that we’re structuring this team or, you know, obviously in our realm, there’s no limitations in terms of clients that we take on. So there’s small clients, there’s larger clients. As Rachel had said, there’s much different size clients that we work with as well and they operate differently as well.

[09:31]
So being comfortable with, hey, we’re going to structure this team to be able to accommodate this need and then we’re going to structure that team to be able to accommodate that need. And then as we grow and as we layer on more employees It’s been interesting and kind of uncomfortable, but comfortable to be like, hey, the way that we were doing this before is not going to work in the way that we’re doing it now. So we’ve had probably four or five of those and I think we’re going through another one right now, especially with the integration. So it’s Yeah. been a wild ride Growth is hard, but growth is good. Right? Yes At the end of the day, it is what we all want.

[10:01]
Everybody on your list wants to have more growth. And part of that is accepting that not every day is going to be a perfect 10 hours of meeting Bliss with work getting done. is slogging through the hard parts and knowing that you have a great team to help support you, hope we have a great leadership team, that’s really driving the vision. But yeah, it’s just part of the fun from my perspective. I think another thing to lay around to that Rachel is the way that we’re rooted from a cultural perspective.

[10:28]
So we claim to not be an agency because we do intentionally try and defy the traditional agency model and all of the folks on our team are there because they’re like-minded in that way. So I think all of us kind of gathering and unifying around that one calling has been really great in these growth spurs for everybody to be like, “Okay, we’re going to rally.” Because this is going to have to be different or we’re going to have to reshape the way that we do things in in this way or that way.

[10:53]
I appreciate that kind of internal lens into how the agency is continuing to grow and obviously navigating those challenges, which again are good challenges to have where it’s like, okay, so we’re we’re amping ourselves up in size and scaling up. When you look at the external landscape in terms of pharma marketing and the different trends and I’ll say it, volatilities that are out there, like what really stands out to you or what are you hearing from clients in terms of like, hey, we’re trying to navigate this. What does that look like from your perspective?

[11:21]
I mean, it’s definitely challenging right now and and clients do have the overall landscape top of the mind. Um, there is a lot of challenges that we I think all know about um in terms of just policy where things are going to go. But in terms of overall trends, something we’ve been talking a lot internally about is this idea of healthcare is everywhere. Um, it’s touching all aspects of our lives. We have a lot more direct to consumer options within healthcare.

[11:47]
Um, you know, Dave and I are kind of not biohackers, but are constantly trying out new things. And I think when I’m even thinking about like the position of, Ezra by function, for instance, people are self-serving MRIs. What does that mean? How do you pull that back into your health care system? People are doing all the trackers, like it’s not just your Apple Watch anymore. It’s so much deeper medical information that consumers can self-serve and there’s just a lot of potential there that hasn’t really been solved about how that’s going to impact our traditional pharma clients. What do you think, Dave?

[12:17]
I think it’s interesting that you bring up the biohacking and and people kind of being advocates for their health. That’s something that’s a trend, but also So, not being ignorant to the fact that others are not that far along in that way. So, it changes the way that we communicate within our our advertising to make sure that we’re accounting for both audiences and everything in between.

[12:37]
Rachel, you probably an interesting thing there about this kind of move towards more DTC in pharma and it’s one of the things that we’ve seen you know like Novo, Eli Lilly, Pfizer they’ve all come out with their own DTC platforms. But I mean even him’s and hers having a direct to consumer Superbowl ad that generated so much controversy and there’s still repercussions coming out of that for the GLP-1 space. Like, I I see the Colagard ads, people saying that you can do these tests at home. Like, everything is becoming much more of we’re we’re being driven by consumerism and we want to be able to lean into that.

[13:04]
What do you make of this move of pharma kind of recognizing maybe years after the fact that like, oh yeah, it is a DTC world and we have to really leverage ourselves either in the products themselves or certainly in the marketing of it. I mean, I have clients who talk about wanting to be a household name nowadays, right? And I worked on other B-to-B brands back in the day that had that same philosophy.

[13:25]
So, I think as farmers realizing that consumers have even more purchasing power, it’s not just about asking their doctor for a specific medication, they’re going to really need to think about building brands that actually stick, assuming we can still have brands that aren’t going to be like Europe where there is no brand and really driving that connection point of why and continuing to make it easy, which is so anthetical to our entire health care system, right?

[13:50]
Trying to get pre-ops, all that is directly against the easy frictionless and see more experience. I want to go back for a second because again you two it’s fascinating to be able to see this story intertwine here where it’s like you have Persephone Empress and 10 and now joining forces into this singular consolidated agency. Talk a little bit and you and you talked about it Dave earlier so maybe I’ll throw it to you first.

[14:13]
You talk about this idea of like being able to match cultures and being able to be nimble and agile and and pick your descriptor of choice but that requires something from you as a leader and I’m curious how through throughout your career, you’ve gone to this point where it’s like, hey, trust me, like we have a vision. Yeah. This is how we’re going to execute on it. Like where does that come from from you? Is that from a mentor that you’ve had or different organizations? Like how do you craft that leadership style? Absolutely. I I think it’s a multitude of things.

[14:39]
I think, again, I hate to keep going back to this, but our whole approach to what was the vision for Princeton 10 kind of guides that as well. We don’t want to operate like other agencies. We’ve seen the flaws of that. So, we choose very intentionally the way that we operate and that also stems to how we staff as well. So bringing like-minded folks in, bringing people that are are focused on the same common goal, that helps so much from a cultural perspective.

[15:05]
And then also knowing that one of the the things we’ve all struggled with in our career working in advertising is having um an agency culture that you don’t feel supported or you don’t feel like you have a team. You know, you’re in your silo. I’m the art guy does the art thing or the copy person does the copy thing. Um, we intentionally are bringing people that we know our collaborators.

[15:27]
And our interview process when we like when we interview with people and when we start to you know kind of field people for specific roles on our team, that’s kind of one of the things we’re evaluating against. It’s not just Can you do the job? Do you have the experience? Have you launched brands?

[15:40]
Whatever it may be, but also the criteria of how are you going to fit here from a cultural perspective because we have a set of values that we’ve created and it’s always funny when organizations do values because it’s more or less external facing or it’s to do good thing to have in some ways. Our values, we live and breathe them every single day. So my favorite value that we have is being intentional and that’s the thing that we kind of evaluate our staff against.

[16:06]
That’s the thing that I feel like unifies us in a lot of ways is we are all intentionally here to intentionally defy the way that traditional agencies have done things previously because of our experience. And we bring those to the table and at Princeton 10, there’s no shortage of hey like if you have an idea and you want to think about a different way to do things. We don’t have to do it just because that’s the way every agency has ever done it. We don’t have to route the project the way that we’ve routed in the past. We don’t have to, you know, present it this way. We can do our own thing.

[16:35]
So, I think there’s a lot of room for exploration. and that’s what P10s are hungry about. Rachel, I want to ask you about your leadership style, but you talk about being able to really kind of flesh out who you’re bringing into the organization. And I as a person that interviews people for a living and has to have a million questions on hand. Like, what is a question or a prompt that you give to somebody that like can be revealing in terms of like, oh, maybe they are a fit for the organization. So, there’s something that like this is a good way to get a better lens in somebody’s soul or their their work ethic?

[17:04]
Yeah, we do a lot of like scenario playing. Okay. Like, okay you the client gives you this deadline and this amount of time, you know, what would be your next move kind of thing? And that’s kind of always interesting. Open-ended question that way. Yeah, and then you get to get down to it and then you pulse from there. So, you know, in the way that they answer it, you kind of get a sense of where they’re going or where their heads at. Um, one of my favorite things about Rachel and what she’s infusing into our organization is the idea of problem solving.

[17:31]
Uh, she’s the best problem solver I’ve ever worked with hands down. It’s amazing to watch her just walk into a meeting that we’ve been spiraling from for a half hour and she’s like, “Okay, here’s what we’re going to do.” And kind of have that leadership component to her. So, we’re looking for that in the people that we hire as well. Like these hungry individuals who want to defy the way that things have been done previously, who want to bring fresh different thinking to the table. And uh a lot of that can be unpacked in an interview process, but also it’s something that we evaluate our current staff against too and then coach to that.

[18:01]
Um that alongside with the way that we were able to get Princeton Town off the ground was really emphasizing client relationships, and how we can forge and build amazing partnerships, not just, you know, the vendor agency who executes on behalf of the client, but co-creating and collaborating and bringing great ideas to the table. So, oftentimes when we’re interviewing folks, we want to kind of get a sense of how they work with clients and and if they match up to that. And again, another thing that we coach towards, right?

[18:29]
We always talk about like, hey, like, that’s not the way we want to conduct a meeting with a client. It should be collaborative. It should be let’s get on the whiteboard and do stuff together. So It has to be strategic, right? Yes Collaboration, strategically being collaborative, pulling things out of clients. Um but my favorite interview question which I don’t always ask but it I do like to is what’s the worst thing you’ve ever made?

[18:50]
Oh, that’s Oh, one Or because it’s it makes people reflect about that they used to like copywriters and stuff too, but it’s like or the worst project you’ve ever worked on because it makes people really reflect about their role. Um and then from an art perspective, it’s like sometimes you write a crappy tweet because you have to because the client gives you 30 minutes, but hearing people talk through that is always so interesting. Yeah, I love that. I don’t know why when you said that the first thing I thought it was a blueberry cake I tried to bake a couple years ago. That was an absolute disaster, but that’s not relevant to.

[19:20]
For me it was a child’s play about Chernobyl that I produced, you know, it’s something the world did not need. After we wrap on this, I’m going to have a number of questions on that. And instead I want to ask you about your leadership style too and you reference too coming from the Omnicom world and stuff like did that shape it or you know how How How did you get to the perspective where obviously very laudatory uh comments here about your leadership style and what you bring to the table, but you know have that come to be? Um trial and error honestly.

[19:47]
I started my career in PR on the uh tech and blockchain side of the fence and ended up with a team of five people under me at that job and went to Omnicom and learned so much about integrated agency teams and had a couple of really great account director mentors who just really coached me through how to do that at a big shop. I mean, it’s a whole different way of thinking. If you’ve never worked at an Omnicom shop, it’s it’s wild. And I think I think holding companies the same way.

[20:15]
And then starting my own thing, I I really had to grow as a leader. I realized to get the best out of people, I had to really figure out how they learned, really walk alongside them until they could run by themselves and then ultimately have their back um so that there was a high amount of trust. But for me, it was this combo of just being thrown in positions where I had teams and screwing it up.

[20:36]
Um a lot of the times until I figured out like wow, this is not how to lead and having great mentors to you know help point out my own issues over the years and and trust trusted them enough to change my style. No I kind of get back to what you were talking about in terms of problem solving. It’s the only way you can go about that is trial and error, making mistakes, and then figuring out ways to get through those mistakes. Yeah, and I have no fear of failure.

[20:58]
I mean, it happens part of life and I would rather go into a meeting and try to wrangle it and and get us to the end goal than to walk out with nothing. For me, a lack of a decision is a bigger failure than making a decision that fails later. Yeah. And one of the things I love about your leadership style, which also was very like culturally aligned to what Prince and Tim was already doing is I I I feel like our employees feel like we’re invested in them because we are. You know, we want them to grow as individuals.

[21:28]
We want them to grow as as people. We want them we want them to have the best time with their family on the weekends. Like it’s just a a different way of approaching uh the way that we manage people and the way that we get them to grow um in the ways that they want to grow. 1,000%. I said to somebody the other day um who I was chatting with us like if your next job is not here at P10, like that’s fine. Like, I will, let’s build the skills you need to go do the next thing.

[21:53]
Cuz I’m invested, I think you are too, Dave, and people and their careers, like, I know that everybody’s going to stay here forever. And if they do, that’s awesome. But I I want to make sure that we’re putting people in a place where they can like be their best selves. And I know you feel that way about our team too. Yeah. And I think we have people that are open to it as well.

[22:12]
That’s another thing through the vetting process is making sure that we’re bringing on people that want to grow, want to be inspired to get to the next level or or at least self-aware of where they want to be and where they want to go. And that’s why I love working with you because you’re just so self-aware, right? And able to really see things that other people can’t, especially within like creative Yeah. the creative strategy. It’s just incredible. That’s fun. No, it sounds like it. Again, I really appreciate you both being on the show here.

[22:39]
I wanted to wrap up a kind of a two-part question in terms of one, what does it mean to be on the Agency 100 list? It’s you know very competitive and it it’s one of those things that is always interesting especially with agencies like yourself where it’s like, yeah, it’s, you know, you’re ascendant, you have a lot of momentum at your back. So I’m curious on that. And too, where you’re going from here? Like what is the next chapter, what’s the next growth spurt, I guess you can say, look like for P10? I think it’s a big accomplishment to be on on the agency 100 list.

[23:07]
It’s something that, you know, we don’t hold ourselves in up to whatever awards we win or whatever accolades we get, but it is something that’s nice to be acknowledged and noticed because we’ve flown under the radar for quite some time. And granted, rightfully so. I think we’ve been small, we’ve been nimble, we’ve been scrappy, and uh you know it’s nice to be kind of acknowledged for our growth and how we’ve evolved over the years. Marcos always used to say he loves being kind of like the best kept secret.

[23:36]
You know, it’s kind of this thing amongst clients where they’re like, “Oh, I have my agency and they’re my writer die agency.” It’s but kind of been cool to be there. But I I think we feel really confident about what we’ve built. We feel really confident about what we stand for as an organization and that’s something that I want. to be able to get out in the world and have more clients. You know, kind of feel what what operating with an agency as a true partner really does feel like. Excellent. Well, again, really appreciate you both being on the show here. Congrats on making the Agency 100 list.

[24:03]
And we’ll look forward to seeing what the next developments are for P10 in the future. Awesome. Thank you. Appreciate it.