We were lucky to catch up with Chris Perkins recently and have shared our conversation below.

Chris, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

Model B was founded in 2016 by three partners on a mission to build a better digital agency. Like most agencies, we had the typical structure: account management, creative, media, and project management departments. From scratch, they built a media optimization platform called Blueprint.tech. Ultimately, this classic structure was a significant factor in holding back the company’s ability to be extraordinary.

I joined Model B’s Board in 2021 and urged the leadership to shift to an ‘Open Talent’ model, leveraging great external resources. When I assumed the President and day-to-day leadership of Model B, we quickly moved to install this new business model. Today, we have a small management consulting-focused account management team and a small creative and project management team. This core group crafts a Success Plan for each client, leveraging our management consulting expertise to determine which marketing efforts to discontinue, continue, and add to achieve the optimal impact. Then, we call upon the precise talent from our Partner Collective to refine the strategic approach and move to execution. With over 60 vetted and contractually aligned agencies worldwide, we have instant access to the right talent when needed, without the overhead or carry costs that traditional agency models typically incur.

By building our team around an ‘Open Talent’ model, as popularized by author John Winsor and Jun Paik, we’ve significantly reduced operational friction and cost, all while having on-demand access to precise talent. This enables Model B to deliver outsized growth for a diverse client base worldwide.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

At my core, I’m a business builder with a modern marketer’s toolset. To help clients get the most from their marketing, I first start by fully understanding the forces of good and evil internally and externally affecting the company, and how they make money. This informs a roadmap of what current marketing and marketing-adjacent actions they should stop or decrease, what core foundational marketing efforts they must continue, and where to start with a test-and-learn agenda to accelerate growth.

I’m fortunate to have worked on some of the world’s most famous brands, including Jeep, Jack Daniel’s, HP, Brand USA, McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Pepsi, at notable agencies such as Ogilvy, Arnold Worldwide, Publicis & Hal Riney, as well as Model B. As the inaugural CMO of Brand USA, I had the privilege of inviting the world to visit the US. To separate our brand from pop culture and politics, our campaign reestablished the US as the land of endless possibilities. As employee number three at Brand USA, I built a team and hired agency partners to launch a $200 million global integrated campaign in 7.5 months, delivering a 20:1 ROI.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

The book “Open Talent” by John Winsor and Jun Paik codified my longstanding belief that leveraging outside talent is critical for a modern marketing agency. Cost and time compression have compelled agencies to work smarter and offer agility in service delivery, enabling them to deliver a vast array of marketing and marketing-adjacent activities that fuel smart growth for clients. Open Talent recounts the early days of ‘crowdsourcing’ through to the co-author’s current activities, leading Open Assembly and helping companies worldwide leverage talent in new and highly productive ways.

Another great resource related to the evolution of work and talent is Human Cloud, led by Matthew Mottola. Human Cloud has mapped emerging new business models that serve as catalysts for freelance and contract employees, ready and able to deliver value to companies, ranging from small to massive global enterprises.

As a marketer myself, I’m an avid student of my craft, equally ready and willing to apply innovative new modalities and marketing methods on ourselves, just as we would for clients.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Early on in my marketing and advertising career, a big agency account management veteran leading a training session told a class of rapt students, “The client is always right!” Well, this is patently false. Sadly, I followed this bad advice for a long time before realizing how it wasn’t helpful in the least.

Far better advice is “We have two ears, one mouth. Use them proportionally.” Listen to understand the question or statement a client is making, then carefully consider if what you’re being asked will lead to the best outcome, solving the issue at hand, while considering the broader context surrounding that issue.

This “Yes, and” approach proves that you’re listening, asking smart questions, refining your approach, and trying to add both short- and long-term value.

For example, in 2023, a large industrial fluid management company contacted us to ask if we do naming and logo development. Our first question was “Yes, for what?” We quickly learned this 100% ESOP company planned to launch an entirely new company, and was looking for help coming up with a name and logo. After some discussion, we first suggested that they inform their ESOP Trustee about their plans, as the leadership has this fiduciary responsibility, which they acknowledged immediately upon our suggestion. Then, we helped them craft a clear and thoughtful business plan, along with the associated marketing plan. Then, and only then, we kicked off the naming and logo development effort, all of which laddered up to the strategic plans we’d carefully outlined together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://modelb.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/topherperkins/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/topherperkins/

Image Credits

All taken by in-house team members