Marcie Brogan still wants to be a
copywriter. Years removed from
her first copywriting job in the advertising business, the CEO of Brogan
& Partners Convergence Marketing still
loves the daily grind of deadlines and
fresh ideas. So Brogan takes that excitement to work with her every day at the
$72 million public relations and marketing agency and tries to get that same
spark out of her 60 employees.
And as the agency has expanded to
include nine partners, Brogan thinks she
might be able to make some time to get
back to the copy desk — even if that end
of her work has to be pro bono.
“I think you shouldn’t be leading a
business if you don’t have that passion,” Brogan says. “You should just
retire or find another business or
demote yourself.”
Smart Business spoke with Brogan
about how to build passion among your
employees and why diversity has made
her business better.
Q: How do you build passion with your
employees?
One important thing is to show confidence that we are doing well, and we are
able to beat out anybody and anything
and any competition with smarts and
savvy. A lot of times, we work long
hours, and if we can’t get a client to go
our way, it’s frustrating — so I have to
show that passion for what we do.
We have lots of pressures, but advertising is not like being cardiologists or
sending rockets to the moon, so we are
permitted to have fun. And I believe in
leading that fun, which leads to high
morale.
That is the distinguishing and attractive characteristic of our agency — that
we always say, ‘We don’t take ourselves
very seriously, but we do take our work
very seriously.’
Q: What is your philosophy on hiring?
After I figured out that I could never
run a business as long as I thought that I
was the smartest person in the room and the only one capable of doing every task,
I decided I should be a leader rather
than a doer.
I look for people that I’m positive are
smarter and more talented than I am and
who bring new skills to the business.
Q: How does diversity play into your
staffing ideas?
I’ve spent many years trying to break
down the white-bread-male feeling to
this business. Not as a social adventure
but because I think that advertising and
marketing have to reflect the environment in which we live. It’s not a white-bread world, so we have to be able to
understand the customers of our clients,
and sometimes, it’s easier to understand
them if the membership of your agency
reflects those customers.
It’s not always ethnic diversity; it can
be age, gender, religion, everything.
We’re in a high-tech market in our North
Carolina office, so we bring in younger,
more technical people. I just think diversity is only a positive because it gives us
better understanding and a head start on
our clients and customers.
Q: What do you do to build teamwork?
One of the best ways of doing that is by
sharing the profits of the agency in a
way that makes people aware of how we make money and how their work causes
us to make money or lose money.
We reward people on a monthly basis
when we meet our income goals, and we
reward them on an annual basis when
we meet our annual profits. Sharing the
money quickly creates teamwork. If
their monthly extra money in their
pocket and their annual compensation
depends on it, then they’ll take better
care of it.
Q: How do you deal with the staffing challenges that come in hard times?
Last year, we had to face downsizing,
and in the Michigan economy, the ability
to replace that instantly was hampered.
So having to downsize was a very
painful task for me and a leadership
challenge in a way to do it humanely and
a way to do it where we didn’t permanently hamper morale. The human
aspect was my first concern, and then
the business aspect of it came second.
One of the things we did, rather than
letting a lot of people go, was we solved
a lot of problems by asking people to
take pay cuts. We did that for probably
five months, then were able to restore
not only the salary, but we were able to
bring back three of the five people we
let go.
One of the things about leadership is
constant communication, so everybody
was aware of what was going on
because we do monthly updates on
where we are, and people were aware of
what the issue was. Also, I have nine
partners, so they led the way by example, and I think that doing that makes
others feel comfortable and confident
that partners are willing to do this, are
willing to take a risk, so they should be,
too.
HOW TO REACH: Brogan & Partners Convergence Marketing,
(313) 874-8555 or www.brogan.com