Transcript

Bennie F Johnson 

Hello, and thank you for joining us for this episode of AMA’s Marketing / And. I’m your host, AMA CEO, Bennie F. Johnson. In our episodes, we explore life through a marketing lens, delving into conversations with individuals that flourish at this intersection of marketing and the unexpected. We hope to introduce you to the visionaries whose stories you might not yet have heard of, but are exactly the ones you need to know. Through thought-provoking conversations, we’ll unravel the challenges, triumphs and pivotal moments that have all been shaped by marketing. 

Today, our guest is José Villa, founder and president of Sensis, an integrated cross-cultural marketing agency. Founded in 1998, today, Sensis is the largest independent multicultural agency in the US. It started off as a website development firm and has now expanded the company into a full service advertising agency. With over 150 employees across six offices across the U.S., Colombia, and Mexico. Prior to this, José was a founder of one of the pioneering Hispanic.com organizations. He started his professional career as a management consultant, and his passions are in this space of cross-cultural marketing, marketing measurement, digital transformation, and more. We’re excited to have him join us for this conversation about the intersection of cross-cultural marketing and the future.

José, welcome to the podcast.

José Villa

Thank you, Bennie. Super excited to be here.

Bennie 

Well, you know, it’s really just an honor to have you here and to think about the impact that Sensis has had in your career. I’m curious, when you started in 1998, did you have envisions that you would be the largest agency of your kind?

José 

No, I couldn’t even imagine that. I was just trying to make it one month at a time. Definitely had no visions of that. I was a couple years out of college. 

Bennie 

Right. Great.

José

Yeah, that was definitely not my mindset. Could never have imagined where we are today.

Bennie 

I always love that as a question for true entrepreneurs. Like, did you ever imagine that you’d be at this space? And it’s always the same like, we were just trying to get one foot in front of the other. We just trying to make it. 

José 

That’s right.

Bennie

So when you think about the kind of impact that you had, what do you see the biggest changes of what your clients needed in ’98 to what your clients look for today?

José 

Well, know, a lot has changed and a lot has stayed the same, I would say, in terms of what clients need. I mean, I would say definitely when I started, there was still a lot of education that had to be a lot of education of clients, of educating them on the market opportunities. When we first started out, we were primarily focused on Hispanic and digital….

Bennie 

Right. Right.

José 

So we were kind of at this interesting little intersection of the sort of know, digital was just starting out in the late 90’s. It was really taken off. That was the kind of the era of the dot com boom. then Hispanic was kind of coming into its own as well. You know, the, the, the, the United States marketers were starting to obviously embrace the idea that there was, you know, a very large lucrative Hispanic market and we’re starting to truly understand it. But we were kind of at the intersection of those two, you know, big trends that were happening.

Bennie 

Right.

José 

 And so there was a lot of education that had to be done about you know, the market being an attractive market for marketers. know, the Hispanics weren’t just, you know, poor immigrants who couldn’t afford things. We were dealing with the issue. I mean, I joke when I started out Sensis, you know, we were answering questions like, you know, Mexicans don’t have computers. That was the kind of thing that we, those are the kind of barriers and challenges that we were having to address and trying to educate the market brands that.

Bennie

Right, right. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

José

You know, the Hispanic market was online, was using technology, embracing it at higher rates than the general market and that it was an attractive market. And today, you know, fast forward to, you know, 26 years later, there’s still, it’s funny, we’re still doing a lot of education, you know, still trying to communicate. There’s always misperceptions, misunderstandings. I think more marketers have come around. 

Bennie 

Right. Right.

José 

So it’s, you know, it’s less of an issue of, complete ignorance at this point, but a lot of it is about just reminding them that you know, this is an opportunity there’s a lot of there’s a lot of misconceptions and and Preconceived notions that are not correct. And so we’re still doing a lot of education. 

Bennie 

Right. Well, it’s interesting. We look at the parallel rise of and growth and expansion of your work in agency, along with the economic impact of the community. I know there was just recently a report that came out last month that calculated that the impact of the U.S. Hispanic community and populations roughly is topping $3.7 trillion….

José 

Correct.

Bennie 

And if it were its own GDP of a country, it’d be the fifth largest in the world. That’s nothing to ignore, right? 

José 

Yeah, and that report that was put out by Latitude, it’s a great encapsulation of the market opportunity, putting it in terms that think a lot of organizations can understand. This is one of the most dynamic markets. It’s a total economy within a large economy here in the United States. 

Bennie

Right.

José 

So Hispanic market is a huge opportunity. And I think it’s finally being quantified in a way that’s understood by a lot of organizations. I mean, our rise in growth has been very much buoyed by the growth of the market. So, you know, and I’m one of those people too. I mean, when you talk about the US market, you talk about that GDP, like that’s, part of that, you know, a small part of it, but you know, Sensis, myself and the, you know… 

Bennie 

Right. Right.

José 

I’m, you know, Hispanic son of immigrants that came to this country and built a business and have hired, you know, hundreds of people over the years and generated a lot of economic activity, you know, we are part of the story of that massive GDP impact.

Bennie 

Right. Which is really powerful. mean, it’s one of the things I was excited when we had the opportunity to sit down and talk today because I saw that like, look at this incredible arc and story that’s reinforcing your own personal narrative and values. And then the business that you’re building in space. You know, I often wonder though, when we, have a lot of listeners who are starting off their marketing career or managing spaces and they may be looking to have a deeper embrace in Hispanic marketplace. What advice do you have for marketers and brands? To approach the community with respect, authenticity, and impact.

José

Well, I have kind of a tried and true sort of recommendation I always have and sort of answer that question, which is, know, always always start with, you know, understanding with research and data and really try to make sure that you understand the market, you know, dive into the data, understand the nuances of the market, because it is a diverse, non-monolithic market. 

Bennie

Okay. Right.

José 

You know, even though we talk about 60 plus a million Hispanics in United States. They are from so many different countries. There are so many different levels of acculturation. There’s young, there’s old, recent immigrant, third, fourth generation. So it is a very complex and nuanced market. And you really have to understand it. You really have to kind of dive in. And thankfully there’s a lot of great data. It doesn’t cost a lot or it’s free to access to get like a baseline understanding of the market. 

Bennie

Right.

José 

And then being able to develop a strategy to think about how your business, how your brand, how your service offering fits into this community. Because when you understand the culture and the sort of size of the prize and the market, then you can understand where you fit in there. Because, often, nine out of ten times, there is a place, there is a big opportunity for a particular brand, a non-profit organization that’s offering particular services. This really cuts across the entire economy and all aspects of our society.

Bennie 

Right, which elevates the fact that it should be a priority on most brand strategic playlists, like understanding how to engage and you’re really missing something if you’re not spacing in. You spoke a bit about research and data. I want to give you all a nod. Sensis has just released some proprietary research, a study that delves into exactly this, looking at purchasing habits. And you went into a focus area of recent Hispanic immigrants. 

José 

Absolutely.

Bennie 

Talk a bit more about what propelled you to do this body of research and some of the key takeaways.

José 

Yeah, yeah, and that’s one of the things that you know.. We try to eat our own dog food and practice what we preach talk about doing research and understand the market at Sensis. This is actually the sixth Proprietary study that we’ve put out that we’ve developed on our own looking at different aspects of Hispanic or the multicultural market. 

Bennie 

Uh-huh.

José 

So this most recent study that we just published called the New Hispanic Immigrant Report is basically an in-depth deep dive look at recent Hispanic immigrants, people who have immigrated into Hispanics from Latin America, who have immigrated to the United States in the last 10 years. And looking at this population, which we felt was misunderstood or even unappreciated. There’s obviously a lot of, we’re in the middle of a political season and immigration is a hot topic. There has been obviously a lot of discussion the last three or four years around significant increase in immigration into the United States.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. Right.

José 

We wanted to dive into that and actually take a broader look at the immigration that’s been coming into this country for the last 10 years. Because there has been a narrative around the Hispanic market that it is primarily now a native born population. Most of the growth of the Hispanic market has been coming from native born Hispanics. So, know, the children of immigrants or, you know, second or third generation and the data shows a very different story if you actually dive into it.

And this is what this report was looking to do is not only quantify, but also qualitatively understand some of the nuances of this new population, which is significant. We’re anywhere from 10 to 15 million Hispanic immigrants that have entered the United States in the last 10 years, which is a market in and of itself. And that is very different than previous waves of Hispanic immigration.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right.

José 

There’s a lot of nuances of this audience, this new marketplace. And so again, in the interest of educating brands and companies about the opportunities that exist in the Hispanic market, this report really dives into this really interesting, underappreciated and misunderstood segment of the Hispanic population.

Bennie 

And I think, as you said, work like this is really critical for us as marketers broadly to kind of build on and understand, to give you kind of, as we said, that insights to move the market forward. I’m going to ask this question of you. You’ve built a business, you’re a small business owner, and you’ve gone from you as an employee, I imagine, in 1998 to today. What do you look for in the next 149 employees? What are the things that you look for as a marketing business leader?

José 

Sure, in terms of folks that we hire, I mean, again, we’ve always looked for a certain profile of person to join our team and to be part of our growth. It continues to be the same. We look for people who are curious, who are creative problem solvers. You know, we’re in the professional services business. Our clients come to us to solve really difficult problems for them.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Yes. Right.

José 

Right? At the end of the day, if you kind of distill it down to what we’re doing, you know, they come to us to, you know, fix a problem to help them address an opportunity or market something really hard, something challenging that they can’t do themselves. Right. And so we’re in the business of solving problems. And so we look for people who have that ability to think outside the box, who can think critically, who can do things they’ve never done before and are comfortable.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm. Right.

José

I love the, love your description of the show kind of at the intersection of marketing and sort of new opportunities. I mean, that’s a lot of how we think about our business, right? We’re kind of navigating sort of chaos and helping our clients identify opportunities out of it. And so we look for people who can thrive in that kind of an environment, who are comfortable with uncertainty, who are comfortable not knowing answers and coming up with new ways to answer them. And you know being extremely curious. I mean, I think that if I had to distill down the one thing it’s curiosity. That’s what we look for in our people.

Bennie

Yeah. I love it. it’s such a regenerative trait. Curiosity leads to more curiosity, leads to more prowess in the problem solving. So I’m going to ask this question about transferential time. Problems are complex problems, nuanced problems, innovation problems are often captured in the brief. All of the client’s hopes, wants, and fears are captured in the creative brief. How have you seen the creative brief transition over the last decade or so?

José 

That’s a great question. As somebody who struggles, like I, my background, you know, I run the agency, but I actually like, I do strategy work. And it’s how I keep my foot in the, the business still is getting involved in a lot of the strategy work that we do. And writing a brief is I think arguably the, the most challenging part of our business. A good brief is everything. And it’s kind of like, you know, if you have a good brief, like everything flows from there.

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

José

I mean, how a brief has changed over time, I think there’s a better understanding these days of like, what is truly an insight? What is a really like insight that’s gonna move the needle? It’s a word that’s often thrown around and I feel like a lot of people misunderstand what an insight is. You see a customer insight or market insight….

Bennie

Mm-hmm.

José 

It’s a non-obvious truth that has a significant potential to you know, like as an opportunity for a marketing problem solution. So a better understanding of what an insight is, is one of the things that I think has gotten better about the brief today than 10, 15, 20 years ago. And really diving in, going deep to understand that non-obvious truth about consumers. That’s, I mean, that’s it. And that’s what makes a good brief. That’s what makes a good campaign creative everything.

Bennie

Right. I love that notion of the non-obvious truth at the beginning. I had a professor who once used to always chide that, you know, an insight is that truth that once you hear it, you felt like you knew it all along. Kind of having that moment where it’s like, it’s completely foreign to you, completely vague. You didn’t understand it. Once you hear it, it brings clarity to everything else. And you’re like, I feel like I should have known this all. I knew this all along. Kind of having that power.

Now, you know, I love the transition arc because you start off with web development as well, right? So these briefs and these problem-solvings, and then it pulls into full advertising. You know, have you found that having such a special focus has been a challenge for the business over the years, or have you had clients be able to grow with you as well? You know, sometimes our organizations, get either internal teams or external teams, we get pigeonholed into what, well, this is my digital crew. But I’m not thinking about them for my social integration or my broader integrated marketing play.

José

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, that was definitely so you’re right about our sort of trajectory and history. We started off as a digital agency. We started off building websites of all things in the late nineties. And definitely for the I would say the first 10 years of our evolution of our our life at Sensis, we definitely got pigeonholed. know, you guys are the digital guys is what you do. You do digital. And so it was very hard to sort of crack into the the get into the larger advertising world to do more traditional advertising as we expanded, we were often pigeonholed.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

José 

I mean, as you stated, and that was definitely a challenge. mean, the market has evolved obviously over time and digital has become everything, right? So you know, what once was our sort of, you know, weakness and this pigeonhole that we were put into has turned into a strength of ours over the years, right? As digital kind of came to, you know, become the center of everything, right? When it comes to marketing and advertising. 

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

José

So, you know, what was our weakness eventually became our strength. But it was not, yeah, it was definitely not easy. And it was hard to get out of the pigeonhole, especially like, you know, 10, 15 years ago, where, you know, there was this mentality in the industry that, you had all these specialist agencies that, that do one thing and one thing only. And that’s, that’s the way you should be using services. And I’ve actually tried with Sensis to move more towards an integrated model, because I do think that that is I think that is most effective most times for most brands.

Bennie 

Right. Right.

José

But, you know, still fight that fight a little bit, you know, because there’s still obviously a mentality out there like, you know, we need to have a separate media agency, a separate PR firm separate. And I really believe in the power of integration, especially now, I think it’s even more powerful and important that all these different pieces sort of talk to each other and are coordinating, you know, having a campaign that’s taken into consideration.

Bennie 

Right.

José 

All these different types of marketing tactics, earned media, paid media, digital, traditional, the user experience, digital experience, the physical experience, all that needs to be integrated. And so I’ve always been a big believer and I’ve tried to structure the agency in a way to deliver on this promise of integration being the best solution.

Bennie 

Which is, I think it’s really powerful way. you know, part of what you’re running up against, I’m sure it’s kind of legacy infrastructure, right? You know, I’m always amazed sometimes at what works together in an organization. And it may be because the leader that was José or Bennie had a specialty between these two parts. And then they built a function around that, but it may not be the best way to think about it all. It just so happens that José and Benny were really good at these two items together and growing into it.

José 

Yep, yep. Or just also a legacy of a business model or an industry structure that’s really not even relevant anymore. You think about media agencies, they’re still obviously prevalent, but there’s still this notion that there’s some sort of, because of their ability to buy broadcast at a significant discount, there’s a cost efficiencies. That’s still an old school mentality from the days when most brands marketing budgets were 70, 80% broadcast. 

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

José

That’s not the reality anymore.

Bennie 

Right. It’s so true. I remember one the early marketing lessons I had, I was tasked with coming up with innovative models and places and new platforms, but I ran up against the old school model that the ad salesperson for the agency was best friends with the ad salesperson for the media platform. And there was no incentive for them to change. 

José

Right. 

Bennie

They’d been running the media together for 15, 20 years. And so here you are on in-house, with a mandate to come up with new experimental channels. And there was no interest in experimenting because that rocked the boat that had been there. 

José 

Yep, yep, no absolutely, still see a ton of that.

Bennie

Yeah. See, which is our challenge for today. you know, I, I often wonder also, as you evolved and you start off, you know, as a cross-cultural marketing agency, how do you manage the creative tension between good work and good strategy in general and good work and good strategy being earmarked for across cultural market versus a more integrated mass market. Are you still navigating that tension?

José 

Yeah, I mean, that’s another great question because as the market has evolved too, if you just look at the consumer marketplace, you look at the population in United States, you can make an argument that the country now is sort of like a true melting pot. We have minority majorities in, if not the whole country, definitely in parts of the country.

Bennie 

Right.

José

I mean, here in California where I live, majority of the population, it is multicultural, it’s Hispanic, African-American, Asian, right? And so do you still take an approach of like a general market approach to a market like California, which is 40 million people, or do you take a multicultural, you’re gonna break up the market into separate and distinct segments and then do targeted segment advertising, or do you take some kind of new integrated approach, what we call cross-cultural, which is taken into consideration all of these diverse markets and looking at them holistically?

 That’s still a question that I don’t think has been answered. My personal answer to that is that it depends on the brand, it depends on company and their position in the marketplace. But I’ve always felt that there’s three different models that are available. It’s almost like a toolkit approach into cultural marketing, if you want to call it that.

Bennie 

Right. Mm-hmm. Right.

José 

And that, we at Sensis and you know, our debt that using, you know, any of the three cultural marketing approaches, right? The sort of general market approach, the multicultural segment specific approach or the cross cultural, you know, holistic crossover approach, right? Those are the three types of models. Yeah, there’s oftentimes tension between which one makes sense, you know, which one is right for a brand.

Bennie

Right.

José 

But I think that tension can be solved through thoughtful strategy and figuring out kind of where your position in the marketplace to figure out which model makes the most sense for a brand. 

I always use the example of like a brand like Tapatio, a hot sauce. It’s a very ethnic brand. It started off, came out of the Mexican community in LA and very authentic hot sauce has crossed over into the general market. Everybody buys Tapatio. You can buy it at any supermarket.

Bennie

Yeah, yes. Right, Are you looking in my pantry right now, my friend? 

José

Yeah, exactly. Right. It’s like exactly. And that’s a brand that, you know, I would argue should take a, you know, cross-cultural approach because it is, you know, it should lean into its ethnic heritage. And it is very authentically Hispanic. But it can cross over to African-American, to general market, to Asian. It works for everybody. And it should not be taking like a, you know, watered down general market approach. 

Bennie 

Right.

José 

And it also shouldn’t be doing just like ethnic specific marketing because that’s not what that brand is. That brand is crossover. Everybody loves Tapatio, right? So that’s kind of a good example of how I think about that, which model makes sense.

Bennie

Yeah. You know, when I was listening to you, was, you know, my answer to that question is always yes, yes, and yes. Right. And I think that creative tension is what drives strategic advantage and growth for brands. Cause our brands are really kind of moments in time. Right. So all crossover hits started off in a specialty authentic space. If you think about the way other culture, you know, is extended in spaces and that they’re learning opportunities. Because at any given time for brand, you may be doing all three of those things in different spaces and audiences, right? 

José

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. Yeah.

Bennie

And you’re learning from it. I know we’ve had brands where, you try and you extending like, yes, this authentic approach works really well if I extend it in this time after I built the foundation.

José

Yep. And that’s a good point too, because at different times in a brand’s journey and its evolution, different models might be appropriate.

Bennie 

Yeah. But I think, you know, I’m so fascinated by the work you’re able to do because it is that moment, right? It’s that inflection point for many brands where there’s access to broader and deeper markets than they ever imagined. Much like starting our business off, right? You have this hot sauce brand that we really love. You have this tortilla that we literally love. And it turns into something more that becomes more dynamic. 

BREAK

Bennie

So when you think about, you know, when we talk about cross-cultural margin, we mentioned it before, I think being authentic becomes one of our superpowers in our space. What advice do you have for marketers about seeking authenticity for whatever brand they’re doing, right?

José 

Yeah. Well, that’s super important as well. And maintaining authenticity. You know, if you fail to be authentic, that is a death knell for a brand, particularly one that’s trying to take advantage of different multicultural markets and communities. You know, some advice to stay authentic is always having an ear to the ground, to the consumer, understanding your place in the market.

Bennie 

Right.

José 

Never losing kind of sight, that on the ground sort of intelligence that is so important because that’s what’s going to always be telling you whether you are still being, still communicating the right way or being authentic with your core consumers. So having that sort of access to, I mean, always defer back to data and, that is definitely, data has a lot of forms.

Bennie 

Right. Right. Right.

José 

You know, qualitative information to understand how your brand is being perceived in different diverse communities is always the best measure of are you being authentic? Is your brand remaining authentic? And then I guess the other thing I would say is not veering, always having sort of like an anchor to where you came from and what your brand has always been about, like not veering too far from that, because every brand has its, you know…

Bennie 

Right. Mm-hmm.

José 

It’s got, you we were talking about guardrails, but like you have to be able to, you know, like every brand has a story and a history and it kind of came from a particular place. And it’s always important to not veer too far from that. You know, there’s always a lot of room within those guardrails, but you have to, you have to stay anchored in who you really are. And, and that to me has always been, you know, a big factor in authenticity.

Bennie 

Yeah. And I think to your point, the guard rails and the anchor give you the permission to play, right? So if you can take 80% of your brand and have it rooted in the guard rail, that will give you permission to play with the other 20% to do the unexpected, you know, because it’s still true to that. And I think about that with all the mashups that we see of some ungodly products that you would never imagine together. And somehow the mashup works just right. 

José 

Mm-hmm. Right. Right.

Bennie 

Playing that extra space. You know, I’m always interested in how, how we work right, and how we work with creative tensions and ideas. It’s interesting, since it’s now you have six offices across the U.S., Colombia, Mexico. Talk a bit about how you’re able to get the most in a dynamic way of having your team spread out in those unique locations.

José

Yeah, yeah, you know it’s interesting because like the world has definitely changed for us. We had, you know, we had five locations before COVID. You know, we always talk about the world sort of before COVID and after COVID. And we had a different model for how we ran before COVID. It was very much each office had its own, had its own kind of worked as a silo. 

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Okay.

José 

And, you know, we really embraced, you know, there was a different culture in each office, you know, our Austin, Texas team, very Texas, West Coast, LA, versus our East Coast, DC, versus our team in Atlanta, very south. And we kind of ran as, we kind of had silos, but after COVID, we were all forced to kind of work together remotely. And now kind of as we’ve moved into this new model post-COVID, where we still have the physical teams in the different locations across the US and in Latin America, but we’re now integrated as a team.

Bennie 

Mm-hmm.

José 

So we work across all these different offices and they all each have their own vibe and their own culture. But we work across offices now and it’s a completely integrated team. And we found that that is created a lot of like, I don’t wanna say tension, but like it’s brought together.

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

José 

You talked about, you know, creative tension and sort of points of conflict in a positive way. That’s where a lot of creativity comes from. And so we’ve been able to harness that, these different teams with these different perspectives and these different geographies and cultures, even within different countries, to kind of have them all work together. Really, I mean, we found that they produce amazing work when you combine these teams. In the old school days of advertising, you’d have the copywriter and the art director you know, on a team working together, physically located together. 

Bennie

Right. Right. Yeah.

José 

We still use the combination, but we now are like combining people in different offices and different countries and different cultures. And it’s generating really cool work, really cool thinking that was not possible before. So it’s really great. It’s a cool model. don’t want, you know, I can’t take credit that like we came up with this, like we did this purposely.

Bennie

Right.

José 

It just kind of grew out of the COVID situation, but it’s turned into a really cool like we have this really cross-cultural operating model now, which is really neat.

Bennie

Well, you know what I love about it? It, you know, I had to ask the question because it shows up in our bios, right? We think about the location, but post-COVID, it challenges the space where we’re not limited by proximity, but proximity in your case becomes an amplifier, right? So we’re not locked into the office in Mexico because it’s physically outside of the U.S. and physically locked in a space in there. This is just another spot in which you have creatives who working together and you can pull in those things. 

José

Yeah.

Bennie 

There’s some unique inputs that are coming because of the location, but you’re not limited by it. And you can then spread that to other spaces, which I think is really powerful when you think about it. But it gives you another strategic advantage thinking about your work.

José 

It really has, it’s really played out that way and it’s been really neat to see the output in particular.

Bennie 

So, you know, I’m always interested in that, in the unexpected. As you look back now, CEO of an agency in space, what surprised you the most, over this journey? What is really, when you think, you know, we’re going into 2025 and you think about this moment, what is surprising you the most as an agency leader today?

José

Boy, there’s been a lot of things that have surprised me. I guess kind of going into this business, I always had a sort of a vision of what that business was. This is even pre-Mad Men era, but I guess what surprised me is how fast things have changed in this business, how quickly, how significantly they’ve changed.

Even just in my 26 years of doing this, working in this industry, in this business, to see how much it’s changed. When I started, I guess you don’t know, you don’t know what you don’t know, but just assume that, and I think maybe the world didn’t change as much as it has. I think this is probably true of the various industries, but my goodness, have things changed so much and so fast. And it feels like the pace of change has only accelerated.

Bennie 

Right.

José 

And I think that’s one of the big things that’s like surprised me about, you know, an industry that’s been around for so long, you know, it’s a very old established industry, but how much it’s changed in not a long period of time. mean, even just in the last 10 years, how much it’s changed and the rate of change has been astronomical.

Bennie 

Our clients ask you for different things today. We talked a bit about solving the big complex problem, but in a real strategic tactical space, have they asked changed? Much as we have.

José 

Yeah, you know, the tactical ask has changed. know, clients come in asking for different things. know, today, you know, it’s a lot of everything, you know, the asks always start with things like I want to do a digital campaign or a social campaign or an influencer campaign. Right. 

Bennie

Mm-hmm. Right.

José

So they’re, coming in with a different set of tactical requests, but the strategic questions have not changed that much. The end of the day, you know, it’s still the same questions, you know, we got 20 years ago, 

Bennie

Right. Right. Mm-hmm.

José 

Which is- I need to move the needle on my brand. need to increase awareness. I need to acquire more customers. 

Bennie

Right. How do I win? Right?

José

How do win, right? And then that one question that we’ve been getting or that request that we’ve been getting since the beginning, which is I want to do both. I want to increase brand awareness and I want to drive customers. I want to drive safety. I want to do both top of funnel, bottom funnel. I want to…

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

José 

I want a campaign that’s going to deliver on both. That’s one constant that’s never changed. They want the world. With limited budgets, and if anything, I would say the budgets have gone down and the asks have gone up.

Bennie

Right. That’s not the direction we want, my friend.

José 

No, unfortunately. And you know what? The accountability has gone up, which is good. I mean, we were always being on data and measurability of everything, but definitely like the accountability. I want to be able to measure everything and I want to know exactly what my ROI was for every dollar I spent. That was not the case 10, 15 years ago. Now it’s like, it’s just, that’s the new way we got to do business.

Bennie 

I’m going to ask this question in two ways. So describe for me what’s the dream client engagement from a fun perspective and what’s that engagement from an impact perspective. And it can be one and the same, but we know sometimes a client’s completely fun, but others, you know the work you’re doing is changing their world.

José 

Yeah. Yeah. mean, I think you’d get different answers to that question from my team, but, you know, in some of the different disciplines, know, the creative team, the media team, but I do think at its core, you know, the dream project and client is always the most complicated one, right? The one with the biggest ask, with the biggest challenge. Those are the ones that we love.

Bennie

Right. Right. Right.

José 

You know, the hardest to reach audience, the most know, complex, I’m trying to, and also one that where we’re going to have an impact on something more than just selling more of a product. Because we obviously do a lot of work at Sensis that is not just consumer oriented, but also we do a lot of work with the government with a lot of nonprofits, you know, trying to do good and trying to have an impact on society. So we love those kinds of, you know, projects and assignments where it’s a challenge. And it is and it’s gonna do good, it’s gonna leave an impact beyond just some dollar increase in sales. 

A great example is a couple years ago we did a campaign, we did a first ever national smokeless tobacco prevention campaign. It was through the FDA, but it was the first time anybody had ever targeted the use of smokeless tobacco. There’s a lot of campaigns out there to get kids to not smoke cigarettes.

Bennie

Right, right. Mmm. Mm-hmm.

José 

But nobody had ever done a national campaign around smokeless tobacco, chew products, things like that. And we did the first ever campaign. We identified this interesting target audience, which was white rural youth who were the most likely to use this product. And we developed the first of its kind. Very hard to reach audience.

Bennie

Right, right. Right.

José 

 We had to break through a lot of cultural challenges and norms to break through and then had this huge impact on actually bringing down the rates of use of this very dangerous and bad for you product. So that was a great example of the perfect ideal client for us. And that was a challenge, can have an impact, and have a broader impact on society and our community.

Bennie

Well, I’m going to continue with this theme and ask this question as we think about your own personal journey and narrative that you alluded to a little bit with your parents and your family, your American story with the business and the work you do. What are you most proud of my friend?

José 

I’m most proud of the people that have come through our doors and have worked here. Honestly, the thing that I always tell everybody that I’m most proud of at Sensis, like the metric, the thing that I get most excited about is the people who leave and come back. 

Bennie 

Wow, okay. Right.

José 

We call them boomerangs because there’s a lot of them. We have a name for them here. That’s to me, that’s the thing that I’m most proud of is that there’s people who come here, work with us, leave for a variety of reasons. Early in their career, they’re going to go to bigger agency or they’ve got an opportunity with client side or do something, you know, the next step in their career, but then they come back to Sensis. To me, that is the most gratifying. That’s the thing where I feel like I’ve made it. I’ve created something that people experience and then want to come back to and want to be a part of again.

Bennie 

Right.

José

Like to me, that’s like the ultimate, like I’ve created something special here that people have that kind of experience where they want to come back and be part of this. To me, that’s the thing I’m most proud of.

Bennie 

I think that’s a beautiful way to end our podcast, my friend. And in true fashion, I’m going to invite you back because I know you continue to do proprietary research on our community and the space that means so much. 

José 

Thank you.

Bennie

So we’re going to come back again, if you’re open for it next year to talk about the next level of research. 

José 

Love it.

Bennie 

But thank you for sharing with us the journey and growth of the agency, navigating the tricky complex briefs, having impact and balance in really creating marketing that changes our world. Thank you, José, and the work that you’re doing. Appreciate you being a friend of the AMA and joining us for this podcast.

José 

Thank you, Bennie. It’s been a thoughtful, wonderful conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Bennie 

Thank you. And thank you all for listening. This has been an episode of AMAs Marketing / And. Once again, I’m your host, Bennie F. Johnson. We encourage you to check out the research report from Sensis and the work that they’re doing as a multicultural agency. We encourage you to explore AMA and all of the resources we have for both your marketing and brand needs. Thank you very much.