Episode 64 // Lessons Learned from 20 Years in Accounting Marketing

Jaimi Koechel:
… Audit manager came in my office and said, “Hey, I was just at an event and somebody asked me who we are and I just said, ‘Oh, Henry and Horne CPA firm, that’s it.'” I was like, “What? We’re more than that.” And he was like, “Well, what am I supposed to say? I don’t know what to say.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, we have a problem.” We are very well known, established accounting firm in the Valley, and now I have an audit manager who doesn’t know what to say, so we need to fix this between the culture, what I think of the firm, what a partner group thinks of the firm, what’s the perception out there, nothing was matching. It just was kind of a hodgepodge, I felt like it was a little messy, so that’s when I decided to start doing my research and looking for somebody to come in and help us rebrand.

Voice Over:
You are listening to the Remarkabrand podcast, where authentic brands win.

Mike Jones:
All right, everyone, we’re excited to have another episode of the Remarkabrand podcast. I’m Mike Jones, and with me today is …

Sam Pagel:
Sam Pagel.

Mike Jones:
Sam, I’m excited for today’s episode. We’re going to be actually doing an interview a little bit later in our episode with Jaimi Koechel formerly of Henry and Horne, but now with Baker Tilly after an acquisition. Baker Tilly acquired Henry and Horne last December, and we’re going to be talking to her about her lessons learned from 20 years in the marketing industry, particularly for accounting firms. I’m really excited about that conversation that we’re going to have in just a little bit. But before that, should do what we always do, name 10 things. Just remind everybody how this works, name 10 things, little improv exercise. Sam, I think, is going to throw out a topic. He and I are going to riff on it and come up with 10 random things that are answers to that question as quickly as we can.

Sam Pagel:
Yep, that’s all it is. And today we’re going to name 10 things you would never want to hear your accountant say to you.

Mike Jones:
I have bad news.

Sam Pagel:
Oops.

Mike Jones:
I did it again.

Sam Pagel:
I’m so sorry.

Mike Jones:
That’s as far as my knowledge goes on that song.

Sam Pagel:
That’s pretty good.

Mike Jones:
You’re going to be getting a call from the IRS.

Sam Pagel:
Mm, that’s a good one. No, that that’s a bad one, actually.

Mike Jones:
That’s a bad one. That’s a really bad one.

Sam Pagel:
We should do this again next year.

Mike Jones:
So how much is in your bank account?

Sam Pagel:
Do you want to grab lunch sometime?

Mike Jones:
Text message emoji sad face.

Sam Pagel:
Ooh, yeah, that’d be a heartbreaker. We didn’t get it done.

Mike Jones:
Didn’t get it done. That was 10, that was quick.

Sam Pagel:
That was stressful.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Sam Pagel:
I’m glad we got that over with.

Mike Jones:
Me too. That’s what I say after every tax filing.

Voice Over:
Find your frequency.

Mike Jones:
Before we get into our interview with Jaimi, we wanted to chat a little bit, just the two of us, about some of the things that we’re going to be talking with Jaimi about and just give some of our perspective, because really the interview’s all about Jaimi. And full disclosure, we’ve already recorded it so I already know what’s happening, which is really cool, and I think there’s going to be some really interesting things there. I am excited for anyone in the marketing industry, whether you’ve been in it for a long time or a very short time, from accounting marketing in particular, and just the lessons that Jaimi has learned. I think Jaimi, I first met Jaimi back in 2016, and she reached out to us and our firm to potentially help their firm, Henry and Horne, go through a rebrand, and we ended up getting that project with them and guiding them through that with Jaimi.
It was a really, I think, fulfilling experience for everybody. Took a while, as rebrands can do, especially for a firm that’s 150 people, three offices across Arizona, and it was a big deal for them. It was really a big deal. They had not really had a refresh of their image, they had not really looked at their messaging in a while, and they had some things. And Jaimi will get a lot more into the details on some of the back story in our interview, but I think it was just a really interesting project for me in particular to really deep dive into the accounting world in a way I’d never really done before. Really got to know an accounting firm inside and out, really see how their culture really drove a lot of things for them, and how could we take that and apply that in the external communication, in the marketing.
And I think we learned a lot. We certainly developed a lot of our process, so if you’re reading our book or something like that, you’re going to be seeing little highlights, things that we’ve learned over the years, and I think this was a pretty formative engagement that we had in forming a lot of our thinking and really putting into practice a lot of things that we’d been saying. I think also just thinking through, we don’t actually get to this in the interview, which was kind of funny. We got done with the interview and we were like, “Oh my goodness, we missed, the one key punchline of this engagement is that Jaimi won six awards at the Association for Accounting Marketing Conference that year for the rebrand and the new website that we worked with her on, and I think a couple other projects that she had done over the course of that year.
That was a crucial year for Jaimi, both within her firm and really building a lot of trust with her partners, but also I think externally amongst her peers in the accounting world, marketers in accounting firms, really recognizing that the work that Jaimi had been doing, and especially this rebrand, was something special and unique, and I think you’ll get to this, you’ll hear this in the interview. She says one of the reasons that she went with our firm was that we were not super embedded in the accounting world. We were not just doing the same things over and over that maybe some other agencies were doing a little bit. And I think that came out in all those awards that she won, of really trying to put a mark on Henry and Horne and say, “Hey, we are different. We do things a little differently. We are unique. We have a unique culture. Let’s really put that out in the marketplace.”
And I hope that marketers, whether you’re in accounting or not, really take in and hear those things in the interview and go, “Oh wow, there’s some really interesting things that maybe I can take away and work on with our brand.” I also just want to fully credit Jaimi, she’s an amazing negotiator of people, particularly with the partners in her firm, just able to really build a lot of trust over a long period of time. She has some great lessons that we’re going to be talking about of how she’s learned over the years, especially in the first 10 years, of how to earn trust, how to get a seat at the table. She ended up becoming principal in the firm before they were acquired, and I have a lot of respect for Jaimi just in that.
I think she’s a great marketer. She’s done a great job marketing the firm, but her ability to navigate internal politics that just come with a lot of partners, and that just is inherent to having an ownership structure that a lot of accounting firms have where there’s a lot of voices and a lot of opinions around the table when it comes to ownership. And as a marketer, you often are not one of those voices. You don’t get that same credibility on day one. Maybe eventually you do, depending on who you are and how you work that, but learning how to work with those owners and say, “I’m here, I am for this company. The decisions I want to make are all about this company and making it better. How can I help you do that from a marketing perspective?” And really learning how to even push in areas where maybe you get some pushback. Jaimi’s got great lessons in that, and I’ve seen those demonstrated directly over the years with Jaimi.

Sam Pagel:
She’s a fighter.

Mike Jones:
She is.

Sam Pagel:
And she doesn’t just fight because she wants to get her way. She fights because she knows what’s actually best for the firm. And there’s an art to that, of you as the marketer, you understand your craft, you understand what your firm should do, but that’s not the end of the line. How are you actually going to get it done? How are you going to make it happen? Because it’s not just your decision. You’ve got to run it past the partners and the team. And Jaimi, we’ve seen over the years she’s an artist in that.

Mike Jones:
She really is. She really is.

Sam Pagel:
She does that really well and she really believes in it. So she’s patient. She learns who her audience is internally and learns how to communicate things well to them so that it’s clear.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, and just to give everyone a heads up, this is going to be a two-part interview. So this episode you’ll get about half the interview really focused on Jaimi’s experience over 20 years as a marketer in the accounting industry, lessons she’s learned in that, and I think some really key lessons of how to build a great brand, really. And then in part two, in the next episode, we will wrap up our interview with Jaimi and we’ll get a little bit into mergers and acquisitions and maybe some ways that firms can think about and maybe prepare ahead of time for those encounters with their brand.
I think there’s things that a lot of firms are maybe missing out on as they jump into a merger or they look to acquire or be acquired that maybe in the long run or maybe in the short run are going to hurt their brand a little bit, even in that transitionary period, whether your brand’s the one that’s going to win out in the end or last, still stick around. I think those are things that I’m really excited to uncover with Jaimi, and I’m excited for everyone to listen to those. That’ll be episode two that’s coming out after this one.

Voice Over:
You are remarkable.

Mike Jones:
I am super excited to have Jaimi Koechel on our podcast today on the Remarkabrand podcast. Jaimi has been a longtime friend of Resound and client at one point, which was super fun. We’ll get into that. There’s lots more storytelling to go there, but she’s now director at Baker Tilly and she is joining us in the studio today to talk about her experience as a marketer in the accounting world and her experience at Henry and Horne prior to them merging into Baker Tilly, just very recently actually. I’m sure we’ll talk a little bit about that. But I’m very excited to have you on, Jaimi. I’m thankful that you can make the time to be here with us.

Jaimi Koechel:
Thank you, Mike. I’m excited to be here too and talk about my experience and share all my accounting marketing wisdom with you.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, all of it. We’re going to get all of it out in less than an hour.

Jaimi Koechel:
There you go.

Mike Jones:
That’s not happening, it’s definitely not happening. But yeah, just tell our listeners a little bit about how you got into accounting marketing, your background, and the experience that you’ve built over the years.

Jaimi Koechel:
Well, funny. So I’ve been in accounting marketing for more than 20 years, so I got into it when I was like 12. I know, it’s a joke, everybody always says I’ve got to do it. No, out of school, I was in Madison, Wisconsin, I started there at a firm, SVA, as their marketing coordinator. I worked there for 3 1/2 years. I can tell you right now I never desired to be in accounting marketing. It wasn’t the fun, cool industry to be in when you’re leaving college as a marketing grad. But I loved it there. Had a great team, it was great firm. Moved to Arizona mainly for the weather. I did not like the winter in Wisconsin, so it was time to get out. And I started at Henry and Horne. I was there for 17 years.

Mike Jones:
That’s crazy.

Jaimi Koechel:
Before we merged into Baker Tilly. So yeah, I was there for a very long time. Lots of accounting marketing experience to talk about there. Lots of projects, lots of initiatives. Yeah, we went through a rebrand in 2016 with you guys.

Mike Jones:
Yes.

Jaimi Koechel:
That was great. But yeah, we merged into Baker Tilly December 1, and I’m now there as their director and their enterprise marketing team.

Mike Jones:
That’s awesome. That’s really cool.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
What have been some of the highlights over those 20 years for you, of just things that stand out as either big learning lessons or things that you would want to impart to other marketers in accounting?

Jaimi Koechel:
Big learning lessons. I would say number one, I learned very early on that no is not a negative thing. So when the leadership team would tell me no on something, I felt like it was an opportunity to turn that into a yes. Maybe they just didn’t understand what I was talking about. You’ve got to remember, they’re accountants, they don’t understand the world of marketing as much as I do or we do. So when they would say no at the executive committee meetings I’d be like, “Is that really a no?” I would then go back to the drawing board like, “What didn’t they understand?” Turn that no into a yes, and usually, nine times out of 10, I’d go back a few months later and change my approach, change my presentation, get them to understand the importance of what I was trying to accomplish, and mostly I did turn it into a yes. That, and then as the years went on, I learned that on earlier in my career, no is an opportunity, it’s not a negative thing.

Mike Jones:
I like that. I like that a lot.

Jaimi Koechel:
Later on in my career I learned that to get a seat at the table, they don’t know they need you until you show them that they need you at the table. So that’s how I eventually turned into a … “Oh, by the way, I didn’t say I was a marketing partner at Henry and Horne before we emerged into Baker Tilly, which as people in the accounting marketing industry know, that is a hard thing to accomplish. But I wanted a seat at the table and I had to show them that they needed me there.

Mike Jones:
Those are really good lessons.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
Those are really good. I can think of a lot of marketers I’ve had conversations with in the last couple years especially, that I think they’re hungry for those lessons.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
And they’re hard lessons to learn.

Jaimi Koechel:
They are.

Mike Jones:
I just know having been around seeing some of those being employed, some of those tactics, it’s like, yeah, those are hard.

Jaimi Koechel:
And the thing is, I couldn’t take it personally that they didn’t have me at the table. It’s not like they were like, “Oh, we want to leave Jaimi out.” It was like, they’re accountants. They don’t think that these certain conversations are going to benefit the marketing leader and help drive change and innovative ideas and whatnot and we can help solve your problems. They don’t think that way. So it’s not a personal thing that you’re not there. It’s not because they don’t like you, it’s just that they’re not thinking that their conversations affect marketing.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. And I’m sure at some level too there’s just a level of trust you have to build with them as well.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yes. First you’ve got to go through the trust.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
I definitely did that over the years.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah, and then once you build the trust, then you have the rapport with all of them. I’ll say, when I started at Henry Horne they didn’t have a marketing culture 17 years ago. So I definitely had to build up that trust and that rapport with all of them and let them know the importance of marketing and why they needed me and why they needed a department to help them grow.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. What are some of the things maybe that contributed to building that culture of marketing that were impactful for just getting partners on board with that idea?

Jaimi Koechel:
A lot of it I think was … Well, it is a multitude of things, but I think I was just always, number one, no was never no with me, it was always an opportunity. I was always putting the firm first. I wasn’t just coming up with ideas to spend the firm’s money like maybe the partners might have thought. I always showed why this would benefit the firm in the growth and how it would impact them. And I would always think about, “If I’m ready to go fight at the table, would I spend my own money on this initiative?” And if I would, then I fought for it until I turned that no into a yes.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, that’s a really good mindset. I think that’s helpful. Have that recognition of, if it doesn’t make dollars and cents, it’s going to be really hard for them to buy off on it.

Jaimi Koechel:
And I think too they saw my passion and my drive. And they’re like, “Well, wow, if she really believes in this, then it must be right for the firm.” But I also too stayed very connected with my colleagues across the US through AIM and I was able to say, “Hey, this is what the industry’s doing. We don’t want to be behind,” or, “Hey, this is where the industry should be going. We need to be ahead of it, be the front runners. Let’s do this.” We started blogging back in 2008. We were one of like 64 accounting firms globally that started blogging.

Mike Jones:
That’s crazy.

Jaimi Koechel:
So they didn’t understand what I was talking about, but they did the one in 64 accounting firms, being only one of 64 accounting firms globally to do this initiative. And it was very little money to do that back in 2008. So it was just like, “Oh yeah, let’s do it. I don’t know what you’re talking about, but let’s do it.” And I felt like that was the starting path of building that rapport with them, that trust with them, because then I was able to show them data and analytics from our first blog, which then turned into, and then we ended up with I think seven or eight.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, I was thinking about that. When we redid the website it was what, eight? I think it was eight blogs.

Jaimi Koechel:
I think so. We ended up, I think, with eight blogs at the end because we were able to show the impact it made.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. And once you show it once. I think that was another lesson I’ve gotten from you that I can’t stop talking about. I’m sorry, I hope that’s okay. But just your ability to see how you can start something small. Like, okay, we want to get to this end, this big end that I want to have with the firm and with the marketing. I think, for example, one was working on social media, building more of a personal usage of social media as a marketing tool for different staff and obviously the partners in the firm. And just saying, “Hey, let’s start small and build some credibility around that, build some consensus around that. And then we know that it’ll get bigger.”

Jaimi Koechel:
Yes, and I’ve used that way of doing things multiple times. Like I said, I started with one blog. Let’s start with one niche, one blog, show the impact, what it can do, and then we’ll duplicate those efforts in the other areas. I did the same thing, before the merge we were working on a restaurant niche. We were doing a whole digital marketing plan, changing up the way we were doing their blog and their content plan, making it all digital. And we were in the process of creating a blueprint for it. And then the plan was, once we were done, we were going to duplicate those efforts in our other industries as well. So I was doing that a lot. Always start out small, and then once you can show the wins, it becomes bigger.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. It’s hard to say no when you’re winning.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yes, exactly. Exactly. That’s how I ended up with eight blogs.

Mike Jones:
Well, zooming in on 2015, ’16, I think that’s roughly the time that we met.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yes.

Mike Jones:
And you were starting to think about the brand for Henry and Horne. What were some of the signals that you were seeing that were like, “This is not working. Our brand is not working for us”?

Jaimi Koechel:
Because we did a whole culture shift at Henry Horne, and it was a fun, young, forward thinking culture. It was great culture, but our visuals weren’t really matching …

Mike Jones:
No, they didn’t.

Jaimi Koechel:
… With who we are with inside Henry and Horne. And then also, our content wasn’t really matching and it wasn’t consistent either. So it was kind of like, “This isn’t working, this isn’t working, but how am I going to tell this to the partners?” Because that’s an expense.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. And there’s emotions in it too.

Jaimi Koechel:
There’s emotions, a lot of emotions. We have been around since 1957, so there’s a lot of history there. But what really got to me was the one time an audit manager came in my office and said, “Hey, I was just at an event and somebody asked me who we are, and I just said, ‘Oh, Henry and Horne CPA firm,'” that’s it. I was like, “What? We’re more than that.” And he was like, “Well, what am I supposed to say? I don’t know what to say.” And I’m thinking, “Okay, we have a problem. We are a very well known, established accounting firm in the Valley. And now I have an audit manager who doesn’t know what to say, so we need to fix this between the culture, what I think of the firm, what a partner group thinks of the firm, but what’s the perception out there?”
Nothing was matching. It just was kind of a hodgepodge. I felt like it was a little messy. So that’s when I decided to start doing my research and looking for somebody to come in and help us rebrand, and then also sell that to the partners as well, because that is not an easy task to do. I will let you know that.

Mike Jones:
No, I’m sure it’s not.

Jaimi Koechel:
But again, I saw it as a challenge for me.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Yeah, but I think that goes back to, you had spent years now building trust, building wins, to where when you go in, and yeah, it’s still hard to convince them that this is a right decision, but they know that your heart is behind this as, this is for the good of the firm. And, “This is really something I think very strongly about that will really help us.”

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah, and I was able to show, “You guys, this is our visuals that we’re pushing out there. Now, does this say who Henry and Horne is that we’re talking about internally?” Our culture, the culture shift we had. “Does this match this?” And I was able to show them visually. And that was a huge part. I also did the example of how our audit manager didn’t know how to represent us out there in the public. And obviously that was a little mortifying, but I was like, “If we can get a cohesive brand, a consistent brand, and live and breathe it here at Henry and Horne internally and push it out externally,” I said, “That will really solve those problems. They’ll know how to represent who we are when they’re out there talking about us.”

Mike Jones:
Yeah. So you go through this process and you come out the other side with new brand and you start releasing that to the world. What are some of the lessons in terms of, how do you do that effectively? How do you make sure that everyone’s now, we’ve started saying singing from the same hymnbook and starting to really think about things all in the same way, with their own unique personalities, but starting to really all coalesce around the brand?

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah. And again, just to remind everybody, I’m talking about Henry and Horne because that’s where I spent 17 years of my career there. Basically, we got through the whole rebrand and we did a whole internal launch. We trained everybody on it. And thanks to you guys, you guys gave us a Remarkabook. And honestly, we lived and prayed through that thing because it gave us, at least definitely marketing for sure, it gave us all the guidelines for content, for visuals, et cetera, and how to represent Henry and Horne when you’re either writing it or speaking about the firm, the voice, the tone, et cetera. So when we launched internally, we did a whole rebrand training that everybody walked away with their own Remarkabook. And then any time we hire anybody onboarding, the process was going through the brand training. And then they got their Remarkabook as well. So nobody had a question how to represent the firm when they’re out there or writing a blog post or article or whatever. Everybody understood who we are.

Mike Jones:
Well, even recently, your Halloween party.

Jaimi Koechel:
Oh yes, before we started recording I was telling Mike about this. So at Henry and Horne every year we did these crazy Halloween decorations, and each department took a portion of the hallways and would just go all out. And I’m talking all out. Just all kinds of different themes, and then kids would come through and trick or treat for Halloween. Well, this last October our audit department did a medieval times theme and they built a castle within the audit department, a legit castle. This thing was really cool. So when I was walking around, I walked up to the castle, “Is that …” They had these flags and it was logo branded, and I walked up to the flag. I was like, “Is that the correct kelly Green?” And the senior manager’s like, “Yep.” And I pulled the numbers out, the Pantone numbers from the Remarkabook that I still have in my office. So it was still being used. And that was actually really cool, it was legit the correct green that they had created for the flag on this castle.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
What do you think accounting firms need to really be thinking about as they’re thinking about their brand? What are the things that maybe they should be considering or worried about or pursuing in terms of really making sure that they know their brand and they are living it?

Jaimi Koechel:
I would say, yeah, first get your partner group to understand, or not just partner group but the whole firm, these are accountants, what a brand actually is. Because I know when we did the process, people just thought a brand was your logo and the colors and the pretty package that marketing keeps putting out there. But you need to get them to understand what it actually is, that it’s actually the foundation of who you are. Like, Mike, you had said when we first started rebranding, which I always repeat to people, if your organization is a person, how do you want them represented out there? And so you first need to get them to understand that a brand is not the logo and the colors that just supports your brand and helps explain the brand. ‘Cause I think that is one of the bigger hiccups. ‘Cause I think once you get that, once they understand what that is, then it becomes a lot easier that they see that they really need to do a rebrand.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. What are some ways that you think accounting firms could continue to level up their brand? You go through this rebrand process. It’s not the end. Obviously you’ve got to get it out there and you’ve got to deepen in terms of how people perceive it.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah, definitely how to up their brand. Well, first off, you want to need to make sure it’s consistent. If you don’t have consistency, that’s a huge problem. And I’m talking about everything from your social media posts to the content to the website to even your graphics at your conferences that you’re attending. Everything should be consistent, down to the client experience when they’re walking into your lobby, the consistency from the different offices you have. Not just the visuals, but how they’re treated when they walk in the door. You want them to be treated a certain way the brand is held at. So everything from the client experience all the way through to all the visuals, the content you’re pushing out there. And also too, when it comes to your brand, as we’ve learned through the pandemic, you don’t have to stay local. You’ve got clients throughout the whole US now, or prospects that you can reach out to throughout the whole US. So you can make your brand more on the national level if you choose to.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
There’s an opportunity for you to do that.

Mike Jones:
I think that’s a really interesting point. I think that’s something we’ve been talking about internally here. And just seeing how accounting firms, that idea of this hyper geographically focused firm maybe is shifting a little bit, that maybe that doesn’t hold as much power or there’s not as much opportunity in that. Just take our firm, for example. We’re not a big firm. We’ve got like 10 people and we’re like, “We need a CPA who can handle employees in three states now.” There’s a complexity of business that is just demanding that a firm has a broader range of experience and expertise across state lines and across geographic areas.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah.

Mike Jones:
We’re doing this big research project, and that’s one of my goals. We’re still sifting through all the data and pulling out insights. But I’m hoping to show too that there is a ton of opportunity for firms to rethink how they position themselves. And I think there’s still a time and place for that really hyper-local, “Hey, we’re focused on this city and we own this city and this is what we do and we love this city and we’re all about it.” But I think there’s a lot of opportunity beyond that to say, “Hey, there’s certain kinds of businesses we’re best suited to serve, or a certain scale of business where they’re encountering some of these problems.” I just feel like especially in the last three years it’s like everybody’s gotten churned up.

Jaimi Koechel:
Absolutely.

Mike Jones:
And so this positioning that maybe worked 5, 10, 15 years ago might not work as well any more.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yes, I’ll add to that too, because that was definitely one of the things that Henry and Horne did back in the day, was the, “Arizona’s largest locally owned.” Because we didn’t know how else to represent ourselves ’cause we didn’t know who we were before we did the rebrand. So we did go off that, just like every other accounting firm does. But at the end of the day, does the prospect really care if you’re the largest locally owned CPA firm?

Mike Jones:
I think less so. There might have been a time and place. I could think back, even 20, 30 years ago I think doing business with people you knew locally carried some weight to it. And I’m not saying it doesn’t any more at all.

Jaimi Koechel:
I think it does in some, because we did have some prospects that would come through and we knew that they really cared about local business. So we definitely played up on that, but that wasn’t the majority any more. And also too, it’s also hard to uphold every single year because anybody could come up and take that away. So is that really a good way to brand yourself when that can be taken away?

Mike Jones:
Yep. Yeah. How do you feel about firms that are full service? That’s another positioning track that we’ve seen a number of firms take, and I’m still trying to wrap my head around what I think about that.

Jaimi Koechel:
I think that’s a good thing because I think as a consumer, a lot of people like their stuff handled in one spot. Do you really want to go to five different people for one thing? Plus, as a marketer and a business development person, the more sticky you make the client, the more they’re going to stay. It’s a lot harder to leave a client that’s using three, four, or five of your services.

Mike Jones:
That’s very true.

Jaimi Koechel:
Than if they’re only using one service. It’s a lot easier just to go find somebody new. So I think it’s not a bad approach.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. Sorry I put you on the spot that way.

Jaimi Koechel:
I know, you did.

Mike Jones:
I didn’t have that one prepared. That’s an interesting thought I just had.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah, but I think the more services you can offer, the better. You’ll make them stickier.

Mike Jones:
Yeah. This is a little bit more of a marketing question maybe. Everything is brand building, right, at some level. All marketing probably builds or detracts from your brand at some level. But what do you see coming or what do you see as being really helpful for firms? What maybe new channels or technologies or things within marketing that they should be thinking about and pursuing?

Jaimi Koechel:
Anything with automation.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
I know now being at Baker Tilly, it’s a large marketing department, over 150 people. So there’s a a lot of people on the team. But I know at Henry and Horne, when we were smaller and there was only three of us, anything to automate to make the job easier is the best route to go. I’m a huge fan. I just started looking into and understanding that ChatGPT stuff. That’s interesting.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, I’ve been playing around with it a little bit.

Jaimi Koechel:
So have I.

Mike Jones:
It’s been weird.

Jaimi Koechel:
It has been. It’s been really weird, but it also has been very robotic.

Mike Jones:
Yes.

Jaimi Koechel:
It definitely can’t be the tried and true that this is what you stand behind. But it’s definitely a great starting point, I think.

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
Because I definitely have been playing around with it just to see, “Oh, what will this look like if I put it in ChatGPT?

Mike Jones:
Yeah.

Jaimi Koechel:
So I think it’s a great tool to help reduce some stress off your back when you’re trying to create content.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, just unblank the page. The other thing I’ve seen, I was messing around a little bit and a friend of mine who works in marketing was messing around. He was showing me that he was taking content he’d already written and saying, “Summarize it, produce social media posts from it.”

Jaimi Koechel:
Oh.

Mike Jones:
Almost like the inverse of it. It’s like, “I’ll create the original content myself, but I want help reducing it down into bite-sized pieces.” Well, that maybe is a task for an AI bot.

Jaimi Koechel:
That is, that’s a great way to use it too.

Mike Jones:
So he got some use out of it. It was clearly still a little robotic. It was like, yeah, there’s a lack of humanity in some of the language that it was kicking back.

Jaimi Koechel:
Yeah, the other thing we were doing at Henry and Horne before the merge was, I was talking about the restaurant stuff, and we were going all in on a digital marketing plan. Everything digital, drip campaigns, workflows, sequences, everything with our restaurant prospects. And then that was what we were going to duplicate across the board.

Mike Jones:
Yeah, then Baker Tilly swooped in.

Jaimi Koechel:
Then we merged in with Baker Tilly.

Sam Pagel:
The Remarkabrand podcast is a project of Resound and is recorded in Tempe, Arizona with hosts Mike Jones and David Cosand. It’s produced and edited by Sam Pagel. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and at remarkablecast.com. If you’d like more episodes, subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, or wherever you prefer to get your podcasts. To contact the show, find out more about the Remarkabrand podcast, or to join our newsletter list to make sure you never miss another episode, check out our website at remarkablecast.com. Copyright Resound Creative Media, LLC 2022.