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Ep. 131 Scott Ensign of Butler/Till: The Blueprint for Trust-Driven, Future-Ready Agencies
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- [00:00]
A
This episode is brought to you by the Build, a new podcast from the guys behind Sincera, Michael Sullivan and Ian Myers. They built their company by figuring out clever solutions to a few important ad tech problems in our industry. That's exactly what the show is all about. Mike and Ian interview some of the smartest tech minds in the biz to hear about how they identified opportunities, solved those hardest challenges, and grew their business in the process. Listen to the Build with Michael Sullivan wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the AdTech Godpod, your window into the world of advertising technology and the people behind it. I'm your host, Ad Tech God. Welcome to the AdTech God Pod where we speak to those leading on strategy. Today's guest is Scott Ensign, the Chief Strategy Officer at Butler Till. As cso, he drives a lot of the innovation agency offerings and builds partnerships for the company. Scott's been with Butler Til for over seven years, which is truly a testament to the culture and the overall growth opportunities at the company. Scott, I'm excited to have you with me. Welcome to the ADTech Godpod.
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B
Thanks ATG. It's great to be with you.
- [01:10]
A
Yeah, thank you and, and, and thank you for the kind words, the pre chat. Thank you for attending our conference. Thanks for being just a supporter. Overall, we appreciate it.
- [01:17]
B
Of course, it was a great event. Really, really enjoyed it.
- [01:21]
A
Thank you. I did want to ask you, you've been with the company for a long time. Sometimes I highlight things like, you know, worked at these five companies in the last 10 years. You don't have that on your profile. You've been with Butler Till for seven years. So I'd love to understand maybe what you did before and what kept you at Butler Till for so long and what that means for you.
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B
Yeah, happy to. So I've been in media for over a quarter century, so I've been doing this for a while, but I've been on the digital media agency side for the vast majority of that. And so I'm a little bit of a sticker. Definitely not someone who jumps around a lot for a variety of reasons. But I will say, you know, I was recruited by Butler Till over seven years ago and it was probably the culture that was the biggest, the biggest draw for me. And so there was the, the size of clients, the fact that we are a media agency. Those are things that's my background is digital media. It's what I'm interested in, it's what I'm passionate about. But also on top of that, being able to work in a culture like this a culture that is an ownership culture, which we can talk a little bit about what that means to us. One that's inclusive, one that is progressive and I think really just has the right idea about where the space is going and the why behind we do what we do is what was a really big draw for me and that was why I joined and as you said, why I've state for the better part of a decade now and really have no plans of going anywhere at this point.
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A
Scott, question so I would like to hear because I, I don't know how that works. How does the ownership aspect work for you, for employees that join? What does that mean and how's that I guess different than other agencies out there.
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B
Yeah, it's a really, really unique and valuable part of, of who Butler Till is. So just a little bit on the story without getting too much into a history lesson. I mean, Butler Till was founded by two dynamic female advertising professionals in the late 90s. And when they decided to exit the business instead of selling, they decided to convert the business into an ESOP or an employee stock ownership plan. And so what that means is every employee of Butler Till is an owner of the company and every owner of Butler Till is an employee. So there is no outside ownership, there is no private equity. Obviously we're not a public company. We're private, we're independent. So when you join work a thousand hours, you begin to accumulate shares with which best over a period of time. So everyone who works here, and that's a really big benefit for our clients, everyone our clients talk to and interact with and is working on their business is literally invested in the company and in the success of Butler Till and by extension the success of our clients. So that is just a really super unique thing and it's a lot of, a lot of places might be employee owned and not don't have anything bad to say about any other ownership model. But what's unique about us is we are 100 employee owned by the people who are working in the business today, which is really unique.
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A
Okay, I did not know that. So that's actually really great. So thank you for kind of educating me on that. I would love to ask you as, as the chief Strategy officer, what does that mean? What do you focus on? What do you cover at the company? What are your core responsibilities and how has your background helped in leading that?
- [04:50]
B
Sure. One of the things I like to say when I get this question is my title is intentionally vague, although it's not really true. So unlike a lot of other strategy people, especially if you're thinking about creative agencies. What that means at Butler Till is that is about our offering. That's what do we do for clients. That is really the main part of my role and my job and my background has informed that. So I've worked in, in strategy and media and strategy for a while. And the, the way that, that shows up at Butler Till, like I said, is what are we, what do we need to do for clients? What are we doing for clients? Where does that need to go to remain relevant and progressive and ahead of the curve? So for us, that's, as a media agency, that is our core offering, is our media offering. So the media team is part of my organization at Butler Till, so is the integrated planning team and the strategic partnerships team. So all of those groups that are focused on kind of the, both the guts of what we do today and where we're taking it in the future are part of the organization that I have the privilege of leading here.
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A
I, I'd love to hear a little bit about how you got to that point because I know that you mentioned you work on strategy and I, I looked at your, the most accurate thing, your LinkedIn profile. You know, you had done digital planning, paid search, you had been a VP of digital media, ran some strategy and partnership roles. What kind of led you to this point and what prepped you for this type of title and responsibility, really?
- [06:25]
B
Yeah, I think the, the timing of Butler Till was just really, really fortuitous. So my background really had been, I mean, if you were to characterize it, as I said, I had roles in strategy and did a lot of planning on the agency side in a digital media capacity before. But my background really is, and my passion, as I said, is for digital media, where it's going. How do we create digital media strategies for brands that are going to drive objectives and business outcomes. And so I joined Butler Till at a time when the agency really was looking for digital media leadership. And so that was my first role, as you mentioned. And Butler Till was the vice president of digital media, was hired, recruited and hired to come in and reorg the, the digital media team for the future. Had the, the privilege of doing that, which has been just a fantastic experience and then was really able to, as I, as I moved into the more executive role and the strategy role, use all of that experience, pull that Butler Till and at other places to, to help to guide kind of where we're going and the growth trajectory has been fantastic. And I, I say this a lot and I always have to qualify it. I'm not suggesting that this is because of me or because I'm here.
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A
Take your credit, Scott, take it.
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B
Really privileged to be a part of it. But the, but the agency has more than in the seven years that I've been here has more than quadrupled in size from a top line revenue perspective and that growth is not in any way slowing down. So we are so excited about some of the strategic decisions that we've made together and how they're paying off for our people. It's really, really great.
- [08:09]
A
So Scott, you see a lot with your clients. You obviously are leading on strategy and trying to get a good understanding of where things are heading, how you prepare for it and how you make those offerings available to your clients. I'd love to hear from you. Where are we heading? What does this mean for digital advertising? What is the impact of new mediums? What is the impact of AI? What's your perspective on the overall, I guess digital advertising industry? And let's start there.
- [08:35]
B
Yeah, there's a couple of things that we're tracking. Obviously we can talk about AI and I'm sure that we will in automation but I think that the main place that we're seeing things head that is exciting and validating and interesting to me is areas of value and trust between brands and consumers. And I, I like to see things like AI and Agentic which you know, if people track butler till they see us talking about those things a lot, which we're, we're very bullish on and excited about. But how can we use that technology to continue to build value and trust between brands which is what marketing and advertising and media and digital media shouldn't be about. And one of the things that has always been in my mind as I look at where the space is going is how do we use the technology to accomplish that? Because I think sometimes, many times, maybe even people look at technology as a way to wow, this is a clever trick. This, this biddable technology, things like paid search especially or lower funnel media in particular are look at these clever tricks that I can now put in place for my brands to help drive down cost or make the numbers look better. But if we're not using those things to fundamentally create trust between our clients and their audiences, then we're really not doing our job. And I think as you look at where things are headed from more mass media, you know, you can see what's going on in the linear TV space right now. Just last night, I think opening night of baseball was On Netflix, which I, I think we don't take a moment to pause and consider like what a big moment that is in the world of media. It's just changing so fast. We now have these tools at our disposal where we don't have to just cast a super wide net, immediate execution. We can talk to people in ways that are addressable, that are accountable and measurable. And ultimately, like I said, that foster a meaningful value exchange that builds trust between a brand and a consumer, a patient, an audience, a constituency of some kind. So those are the things that we're really focused on and excited about. Butler Tail's purpose is, as you'll see if you spend time with people here, is to create connections and make a difference. And that really flows through, through to all of the work that we do and where we see the space going.
- [11:08]
A
You know, Scott, you mentioned trust and trust has come up a lot, especially in digital advertising over the last few years. Transparency is obviously very hot and important. I just got off of a prior recording where we really dug into the transparency aspect, partnerships and also the transparency aspect of supply chain and transparency aspect of fees and fee structures. How do you guys view that overall? I know that you guys are very data driven, you're very outcome driven. How do you view your partnerships with data partners? Is this internal, is proprietary? And how do you work with your clients in that aspect?
- [11:44]
B
Yeah, such a great question and such an important question. And I want to, I want to preface this one too, right. Like I'm not, I'm not suggesting that other models are less than or wrong. I just want to talk about how we do it and what works for us. And so I think because of our, the governance of our company, like we Talked about, being 100% employee owned and being so accountable to our people, like transparency is just wired into the way that we do business. So we have a meeting internally every month. Every employee of Butler Till knows what our top line is, what our bottom line is, where we're going for the year, what our five year plan is. Because they are the owners of the business, they are part of that, they have to know it. And we really take that same approach with our clients. So I think we've really been out front in terms of transparency. We don't do non disclosed models. We're 100% transparent with our clients. We do have instances where we get money back from vendors and I know that's a common thing in the industry. But what we've done is created a 100% transparent innovation fund for our clients. So when we get dollars back from a platform, from an ssp, from a data provider as part of a commercial agreement, those dollars don't go back to Butler till they go into an innovation fund that is client specific based on client spend. And we go back to our clients and say we have, you know, X number of dollars in this Innovation Fund. Here's a couple of great ideas that didn't make the plan the last round for very good reasons. But now we're coming back to you and saying not only do we want to do this because we think it's important, but we have this built in funding that has come as contribution from the partners that we work with and that's been a really great market position for us and one that, like I said, it's not just the way we sell, but it's something that really is in line with how we're structured and who we are as a business and as a group of people on the Innovation fund.
- [13:47]
A
So is that a fund that you guys use to just test new stuff and basically limit the financial risk? Like hey, we have allocated this cash or this, this fund amount and we're going to try some sort of new medium, some sort of new tactic, some sort of technology.
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B
So you're really teaming me up to pontificate, which I'm trying not to do too much, but yes, is you can go for it. So we are, I, I love this, I love the space, I love this world. But one of the things that has always been a problem that I've identified and, and been tasked to work through as I've worked in planning and strategy roles over the years is planning cycles in something like paid media are naturally resistant to innovation. And by that I mean you're going to do what's worked before. Just a simple kind of regression analysis will tell you do X, Y and Z. And if you have limited dollars, which spoiler alert, everyone has limited dollars, you're first going to do the things that you know are tried and true and it worked. So the Innovation Fund idea was in part created to say how do we break? Because we know there's stuff that's important that's coming and the sooner we can test it and get to it, the better off we're going to be, the more of a head start we're going to have in that space. And so how do we interrupt those naturally innovation resistant planning cycles? And we've done it by building in that funding and saying we're going to do that next thing. It's not Tried and true, but we, we believe that it's important, so let's test it together using these contributions. That has been so much fun doing that alongside client.
- [15:22]
A
I'm sure. It's funny, I, in a past life, I worked with agencies and sold to agencies, never worked at an agency. And I remember sitting down with a media planner once, I told him, how do we get on your plan? We want to be on your plan. We've sent you 50,000 proposals. We've responded to everything. And I remember he went to Whiteboard and he drew and he says, here's where like 70% of my spend goes. And that's been this way for four years. And then here's the other 30% that we're willing to play with, and you're late to the game, so maybe next time. And I think what's interesting is that that budget that's being allocated can be used to test new vendors, new partners, new technologies. But a lot of the bigger hold codes just don't have the bandwidth, and they also just don't have the willingness to try. And so I think that's what makes you guys really unique. The fact that you have this, you know, innovation fund to be able to say, look, we have the sources and we have the resources to do this. Let's give it a shot and try it out, and if it works, we'll scale it, and if not, then, hey, at least we gave it a shot.
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B
Well, and I think the other thing that you put on there too, and your, that conversation that you're describing is exactly the type of thing that really sparked this idea, is like, we know we have proposals from, from vendors who are innovating, doing really cool stuff. And you know, we say, we've always said, even before we had the innovation fund, we want to set aside X percent of this budget for testing for new stuff. And of course, that happened frequently, but often that money gets gobbled up or budget gets cut is the first thing to get cut, et cetera. And all of us in client and agency world in particular, know about budget adjustments and cuts throughout the year. But the whole idea of those funds is to, to meet that exact question. It's like, how can we work with these people that we know are, have the, the stuff that we need and are working on the things where we see the space going to get ahead of that? And that is, like I said, that's where the fun stuff is for sure.
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A
What is fun for you, Scott? Like, what is something that you've looked into, explored, or even just implemented with your clients that you're bullish about, that you're excited about overall?
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B
Yeah, well, we mentioned AI in Agentic before and I guess it wouldn't be a podcast unless we, yes, had that conversation at some point, you know, but this was, you know, this was covered in the trades, which was really cool. But, you know, we were, we worked with Chiloso, which is a beverage, alcohol and beverage brand that we worked with for a number of years alongside our partners at PubMatic, ran a fully agentic media test and what we believe to be at least one of, if not the first time that's ever been done. And that was an innovation fund project, for example. And so this is like, we don't really know exactly what's going to happen here. We just know that we believe that this way of buying is going to be a big part of the future and is really important. And so we were able to do that. And that has really set the stage for a lot of similar tests and programs for other clients that are now going on all across the agency. So that part has been really fun. And just thinking about, like, what does that mean for what we can do? What problems can we solve? What value can we create using this new technology that's really just helped to crease the skids in that way in so many ways for the agentix side of things.
- [18:44]
A
Right now it's mostly on the buy side.
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B
Right.
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A
Like the core focus on would it be considered ADCP or is that separate? Yeah, so.
- [18:51]
B
Yep. Well, that test was, was done through adcp and we're talking with, as I said, other clients, other partners for us. Yes, that was on the buy side. You know, we were able to create a brand and buy side agent that was talking to a seller agent in that case on PubMatic side. We're also doing some work with Yahoo and with Scope three. So there's, like I said, lots of stuff going on on both sides. But the main thing is like, what can we use agents to help us with, to buy, to create more value, to make these buys over the long term even more valuable for our clients.
- [19:30]
A
Amazing. Scott, I want to thank you. Thank you for being my guest today. I appreciate Butler Till. You were actually the second person from Butler Till. I just had your CMO record with me a couple weeks ago. Truly great team. I appreciate everything you guys have done for us at architecture and for ad tech. God. So thank you.
- [19:46]
B
Well, thanks so much. We really appreciate you. We really appreciate market. I have been a longtime listener of the podcast and I really appreciate your focus on the great people in this industry who helped to make it happen and the way that you focused on the positive things going on, because I think there are so many of them and they don't get enough air time. So thank you.
- [20:07]
A
I agree, I agree. Thank you, Scott. Speak soon.
- [20:09]
B
Thank you.
- [20:11]
A
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the AdTech Godpod, a podcast for the people about the people people. Stay connected with me for more insights, trends and interviews in the realm of ad tech. Don't miss out on the latest updates, so follow me on X Instagram and connect with me on LinkedIn. Don't forget ATG Slack community has insights, networking opportunities and jobs. Keep the conversation going and stay at the forefront of adtech innovation.