• by Bill Duggan , Yesterday

In advance of the upcoming Association of National Advertisers In-House Agency Conference (June 11-13 in Nashville), I sat down with Jonah Bloom, vice president-consumer marketing and Chief Creative Officer at tech care marketer Asurion to discuss his views on in-housing and the industry overall. 

Bill Duggan, ANA: Tell us about your in-house agency. When was it established, how many people work there, what are examples of typical projects?

Jonah Bloom: Asurion had a smattering of in-house resources throughout most of its 25-year-history, but we really started building out a full in-house agency in 2015 and accelerated to a robust multi-disciplinary in-house marketing shop a few years ago. We primarily market our products via our many channel partners (Verizon, AT&T, and Amazon being the biggest of them), so a lot of the work is sales support. That includes enrollment campaigns, point-of-sale materials, sales training, landing pages, buy flow optimizations, and so on. It’s not what most ad people think of as sexy, but it has helped turn Asurion into one of the biggest subscription businesses in the world, and we enjoy the challenge of bringing creativity to some pretty well-trodden territories.

Duggan: How do you decide what work gets done internally versus what gets done by an outside agency?

Bloom: We only go outside for two reasons: when we need scale or expertise that we don’t have. For example, we add scale to supplement our in-house video team with production agency resources for a big shoot, or when we’ve got two or more shoots at the same time. Last year we added expertise by pulling in local search experts Sterling Sky to boost our savvy when we were experiencing challenges keeping our uBreakiFix stores in the map pack following a pair of Google core algorithm updates.

Duggan: In-housing usually starts with creative projects and media is sometimes added later. What are the media capabilities of your in-house team? And do you see that increasing over time?

Bloom: We have a small-but-mighty media team in-house, and we partner with agencies like AdVenture Media Group when we need additional scale or expertise. I don’t see us adding to our in-house capabilities in the short-to-medium term, beyond maybe a strategic hire here or there. I expect that the bigger changes in what we do, how we do it, and who does it, will be wrought by AI, both in terms of proprietary Large Language Models Asurion is developing to provide great customer service, and the vast range of AI-fueled martech solutions that we’re trying to stay abreast of and test when we see potential applications in our work.

Duggan: Your career has been very diverse. We first met when you were editor of Ad Age. You’ve been on the agency side with Kirshenbaum Senecal Bond. You then transitioned to the client side and are now with Asurion. What surprised you the most about being on the client side?

Bloom: I guess becoming a ‘client’ I was surprised that everything I thought about large enterprises as an agency or media person still felt true (too slow, apt to quash creativity, etc.), but also, how much better I understood and empathized with the reasons for such flaws now I was the person responsible for them!

Duggan: Your LinkedIn activity includes a post on creative briefs. Our work at ANA indicates that poor creative briefs are a major roadblock to achieving creativity objectives. What advice do you have for delivering better briefs?

Bloom: I couldn’t agree more with the ANA’s conclusions. Bad briefs are the leading cause of bad marketing. The first step in improving them is acknowledging that and committing to working harder on briefs, even when the production deadline scares the heck out of you. Take the trust fall – time spent up front will save time in the long run. Use the extra time and effort to push yourselves to come up with a real, resonant insight into the humans you’re trying to connect with. If it feels both irrefutably true, but also surprising for some weird reason, you’re probably onto something. 

Duggan: Finally, what most excites you about today’s ad industry? 

Bloom: I love the speed with which new brands emerge and even start to scale in their categories. One day they’re interesting new entities like Purely Elizabeth, Seed, or El Nutra, and the next they’re weirdly omnipresent like On, Liquid Death, Fever Tree, Farmer’s Dog, Dr Squatch. And while there are exciting common themes – like originality – there’s no predictable playbook.

I’m also excited – and, of course, scared – by the potential for AI to boost a creative person’s impact. It’s amazing how quickly you can get from an idea to interesting explorations of the idea with the tools available to us today.