Company: PCF International Integrated Marketing & Technology
Owners: Ginger Peterson
Year Started: 1996
Employees: 11 – 25
In the latest episode of “An Agency Story,” listeners are taken on a fascinating journey with Ginger Peterson, the seasoned force behind PCF International, an integrated marketing and technology powerhouse. This episode, aptly titled “Adaptation,” sits as a testament to the relentless evolution and innovation that marks the advertising industry, and PCF International’s strategic navigation through these waters.
From the outset, Ginger delves into the origins of PCF International, sharing the agency’s growth from a fledgling venture into a 28-year-old titan in the advertising realm. The episode is rich with anecdotes of the industry’s pre-digital days, humorously highlighting the seismic shifts brought about by digital transformation. Listeners will find themselves enthralled by tales of fax machine foibles and the thrill of pioneering digital marketing strategies.
Ginger’s recount of the challenges and triumphs in partnership dynamics offers a candid look into the complexities of growing a business with others. Her bold stance on operating solo, fueled by lessons learned the hard way, serves as a powerful narrative on leadership and the importance of steering one’s ship with a steady hand.
What makes this episode particularly engaging are the insights into maintaining client relationships, the art of deadline management, and the pivotal role of clear communication within the fabric of a successful agency. Ginger’s personal anecdotes, peppered with wisdom and wit, illuminate the path she’s navigated from the agency’s inception through to its digital dominance.
Listeners are left contemplating the essence of adaptation in business, the resilience required to evolve with the times, and the value of nurturing a team that shares in a vision of excellence. This episode is not just a story about the advertising industry; it’s a compelling narrative of perseverance, innovation, and the relentless pursuit of success.
Tune in to this episode of “An Agency Story” for an inspiring look at what it takes to lead and succeed in the ever-changing world of marketing and technology. Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or a seasoned professional, Ginger Peterson’s journey with PCF International is sure to spark reflection on the power of adaptation in driving forward.
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Show Transcript
Welcome to An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. From the excitement of starting up the first big sale, passion, doubt, fear, freedom, and the emotional rollercoaster of growth, hear it all on An Agency Story podcast. An Agency Story podcast is hosted by Russel Dubree, successful agency owner with an eight figure exit turned business coach. Enjoy the next agency story. Welcome to An Agency Story podcast. I’m your host Russel. In today’s episode, we are joined by Ginger Peterson leader of PCF International based in Sarasota, Florida. Titled”Adaptation”. This installment unfolds Ginger’s compelling narrative showcasing PCF International’s journey through the digital age and its unique stance in the marketing world. Ginger Sarah’s pivotal moments of transformation, including a shift from traditional advertising to digital dominance and lighthearted tales like the fax machine’s farewell illustrating the agencies’ agile and innovative approach to business challenges. Discover how PCF International’s dedication to evolution combined with Ginger’s visionary leadership has navigated the agency through the ever-changing landscapes of marketing and technology. Enjoy the story.
Russel:
Welcome to the show today, everyone. I have Ginger Peterson with PCF International with us here today. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Ginger.
Ginger:
Thank you, Russel.
Russel:
Excited to get going with our conversation, but if you don’t mind, start us off, tell us what PCF International does and who do you do it for?
Ginger:
PCF international is a full service advertising agency, marketing company, and we handle digital marketing, social media, interactive websites, marketing campaigns, promotions and events, and a lot of communication with our clients.
Russel:
That must keep you pretty busy. How did you come up with the name?
Ginger:
We originally started in 1996. We just turned 28 years old, if you can believe it. The P was for Peterson, the C as in Chang and F as in Fleshman, and, um, Fleshman left in year two and Chang left in year 10 and I’m the last one standing. The best one, of course.
Russel:
No doubt. No doubt. I mean, we could just change the name to P International, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it, I guess.
Ginger:
Yes, I would agree. And plus we had branded PCF for, you know, many years and so I decided to stick with the name.
Russel:
I imagine there’s some interesting, conversation around just that whole journey in of itself. But before we get to all that good stuff, what were you thinking you were going to do when young Ginger was going out and about in the world?
Ginger:
I don’t really think we knew what we were getting into when we started an ad agency. I think all three of us, we had had a lot of experience working at other advertising agencies and we weren’t liking what we were seeing with a lot of the bosses leading the companies. I think the reason why all three of us ended up joining forces originally is we felt we could do a better job. And, um, boy, were we in for a rocket ship ride when, when we started, it was overwhelming. All the details, the accounting, the setting up accounts, you know, all the meetings and back in those days, if you can believe it, the internet wasn’t even around. Email was not used. It was still the fax machine. Transport 28 years later, we’re all digital, everything’s interactive so the marketing field has just changed tremendously.
Russel:
I can’t even imagine. I kind of want to experience this someday. I mean, I need to simulate like what a pre-digital work environment would be like. I think it would be a really fascinating experience. Maybe that’s a good business idea. If anybody out there wants to simulate pre-technology work environments, maybe that’ll make us all appreciate all these crazy complicated tools we have.
Ginger:
Yeah, it’s funny. It actually meant we had a lot more meetings in person because of course, back then you would have to go and meet with your clients. We’re thrilled with the technology changes because of course it’s lessened by 90 percent, the client meetings and you can now have meetings like the one we’re having now where we can see each other digitally.
Russel:
I’m guessing in 1997, like you didn’t even, did you even have an email address, when you started back then? No email?
Ginger:
No, no, we were strictly fax machines. I was really thrilled when we could give up the fax machine.
Russel:
Oh I bet.
Ginger:
All the papers were always sticking and yeah.
Russel:
I still get angry when there’s these random occurrences where someone, the only way you can send something is a fax. I’m like, come on now, um, no, no, no need for that anymore. So now I got to go dig up some random app that allows you to fax from your computer. Anyway, those are me problems. Yeah, I mean, I’ve heard that quite a bit, right? When people start an agency, they’re like, we can do this better and probably in a little bit of my own experience. You run into some stuff like, oh maybe this wasn’t easy as I thought. But, I mean, did you just wake up one day and say, bye corporate world, I’m starting this? Did you do the whole freelance to, you know, where that got too big to handle and then jumped over? How did that look for you?
Ginger:
That’s a great question. In terms of me deciding to start my own agency, I actually started it because, I had started at a big ad agency and then I ended up getting married and moving to a kind of remote location in the Hawaiian islands. It was my father that encouraged me to start my own firm. I remember my first client, I was billing at 15 dollars an hour and I know. I ended up when I left my own company, I, you know, was grossing over a half a million dollars annually. I ended up merging with the two partners when I relocated to a much larger city. And then of course, with larger accounts and partners, we had no idea what we were getting into with partnerships as well. You know, how some partners work harder than other partners. Those types of things was quite an adjustment for me.
Russel:
Yeah. I’m definitely over the course of a number of episodes now heard good partnership stories and not so good partnership stories. When you look back, for those listening on, you know, how you went about that process. What’s a couple of your takeaways, your, your lessons learned from that?
Ginger:
Don’t ever have a partner, try to do it on your own. I think partners are gigantic headaches. They can allow you to grow your business faster and quicker, but in the long shot of things, I think they really hold you back because invariably, you’ll have a partner that he or she will not pull their workload and that leads to conflict when you’re divvying up the year’s funds and bonuses. You start getting upset when you’re doing all the work and a partner isn’t doing much of anything. That was a whole learning curve for me. And then getting rid of the partners and then doing it on my own and then having to talk with clients. Hey, I’m going out on my own and trying to build their confidence that I could do every bit as good of a job as I could without my partners.
Russel:
That sounds like that must have been a really bad situation for, right? Not, oh, here’s a few things I might have done, just manage the relationship better something like that to be like you know what? No partners. No way, no, how. And not to, you know, want to dig deep into what was clearly a long time ago in past. The net sum takeaway, I’m sitting over here saying, man, that must have been really bad for you.
Ginger:
Yes, it was difficult, especially when you have a partner that spends and spends and hides spending from you and then you end up getting the bills, like what’s going on? I’m glad it’s behind me. It was a great learning lesson. Would I have partners again? No, I would not.
Russel:
Well it sounds like, as you said, 27, 28 or however many years after the partnership?
Ginger:
28 years.
Russel:
Yeah, it’s worked out well for you. I’m sure that’s all reinforced itself. Once you got, it was just you alone in the business and you mentioned how you’ve got to go out there and build the confidence and really take hold of the reins of the business, what was step one, two, three, as you were going about that process?
Ginger:
Step one, I think is the most critical is just communication with your clients. You never want to grow to a stage where you’re not communicating with your clients and that has just been my saving grace, is strong relationships with all the clients, communicating when problems happen. And being honest, and I think a lot of ad agencies, that’s a downfall. When problems happen, they tend to hide it from a client, and I have never done that. Like when we’ve had, for example, a website go down, you know, you don’t want to tell the client that the website’s down, but you need to let the client know when you have problems where a campaign did not deliver the results that we were saying it was going to deliver. You need to talk to the client. Let them know the reasons why you didn’t feel like the campaign was as successful. Communication, to me, is at the top of the list.
Russel:
Love that. You really can’t go wrong with too much communication. I mean, or at least it’s far better to try to pare down good, constant, consistent communication than it is to try to have to beef it up.
Ginger:
Yeah. And secondly a very, very important aspect of running a marketing company, advertising agency is the ability to meet deadlines. You have to work way ahead. We’re in a very deadline oriented business, and if you can’t meet deadlines, you’re not going to survive in this business point blank end. Don’t get in it if you can’t meet deadlines.
Russel:
Ain’t that the truth.
Ginger:
Because in advertising, we’re always working a couple months ahead with almost all the campaigns. It’s really important to have a vision and to be able to work many months ahead, so that, you know, you’re not caught in a difficult position with a client, where your marketing campaign hasn’t even started.
Russel:
That would have been good advice when we were starting our agency. I think we made deadlines, but it was probably the worst part about it was the, how we made them. There was a lot of, uh, last minute scrambling, things like that in the early days, but I do remember that being a key turning point for us when we said,”you know what, we’re never missing a deadline again,” whether internally or externally. And that commitment allowed us to figure out all the processes so we could do it less chaotically because that wasn’t going to be sustainable either. Good takeaway there. Is there a third one? We heard one, we heard two. Is there a third one on the list?
Ginger:
A third would be, and it’s fairly basic, is getting billing out by the 15th of every month for the end of month billing. We get our billing out early always because it allows clients to be able to pay within 30 days. And also with really large jobs we now collect 50 percent down, you know, cause we’re not a bank. And a lot of clients, think ad agencies are banks. But just getting your billing out in a timely matter, and when clients aren’t paying their bills on time, you have a problem and it’s the hardest part of any owner’s job. You have to pick up the phone and say, you know, what’s going on? You’re not paying your bills on time. And you need to work with them politely if you think that they can pay their past due bills. If you don’t think they can pay, you need to just cut it off right there and move forward.
Russel:
Yeah. I mean, that’s often an easy thing to overlook in agencies, but I want to make sure the people in the back hear that is, is have your payment terms, be very consistent, be very diligent about them, because, as you said it best, agencies are not a bank and don’t treat yourself like one and don’t let your clients treat you like one. Very sound advice there. So, right, I mean, there’s so many things we could talk about, you know, given the history of your agency, but obviously a big one was the shift over the years and somewhat early stages of your agency from this world of traditional to digital. What did that look like in your agency?
Ginger:
Extremely difficult. We were heavy duty broadcast, a lot of television production. I actually really miss that. I miss the TV production days, and it was very difficult switching clients to websites, to digital ads, to social media, and especially I would say convincing them that they needed these components of new technology to be able to succeed and to reach their target markets, and also that it’s more affordable than it was with the old traditional media of newspapers, television, radio, magazines. that was something that we really pointed out that they’re actually saving money by switching from traditional to interactive and now the interactive budgets have caught up, I would say over the years but when that first came about the budgets weren’t all that great. It was a very scary thing, for an advertising agency to switch out of the big production dollars, into interactive.
Russel:
So did you end up slow rolling that thought process or was there like a day of switching over? How did that actually look like on maybe a more chronological scale?
Ginger:
It was a slow process. Some of our clients did not want to give up their television commercials. When they started seeing competitors that we presented to them, that were all interactive, they started realizing, hey, we better listen to our ad agency, you know, cause this is the way the world’s going. It also created just a lot of problems in terms of how do you bill? Everything was new and, you know, we weren’t entirely sure how to bill for digital ads, how to bill for social media, how do you bill for SEO and SEM and all that kind of stuff? We had to establish how you build those things and how we could still be profitable as an ad agency and also that we could show accountability for what we were doing.
Russel:
It’s so funny, and I’ve probably mentioned this a few times on other shows, talking about similar concepts or whatever. But this idea that, you know, I think it’s hard to think about today, but to your point, we didn’t really have references for building and doing digital services back then. We were stealing things from all the probably wrong industries when we think about digital today. But again, we didn’t know what we were doing. And so this is how waterfall was born and integrated into digital. That became pivotal and to move away from waterfall. And now people might not even know what waterfall is. But this idea that we had these digital first companies, that that’s all they ever did and all they ever knew was just starting at best. From, again, chronological scale, is there a year when you can think back and like, okay, this was when the critical shift happened where, all that pain of transition switched over?
Ginger:
I would say the year 2013 was kind of when it started, we started seeing a major shift. Between 2013 and 2015, if you didn’t have everything together digitally and you weren’t moving in that direction. You were probably not going to do so well.
Russel:
Okay. And then if we fast forward to where the business is at today, are you a hundred percent digitally focused today? Or is there still remnants of that traditional advertising?
Ginger:
That’s a good question. I would say almost all of our clients, we’re interactive digitally with them. We have some clients where they stick with tabloid inserts into newspapers and some radio campaigns. Radio still works, believe it or not with events, but it has to be the right type of clients for radio and tabloid inserts. But I would say by and large, 95 percent of our clients are all interactive.
Russel:
I mean, I didn’t even know tabloids were still a thing. Are there still tabloids?
Ginger:
There’s still tabloids, if you can believe it, that still get inserted into newspapers that you can direct mail. It does work very well, if you can believe it, in certain markets.
Russel:
What’s an example? I need to know an example of what’s a good market.
Ginger:
An example would be event marketing for shopping centers and it would be more family oriented, like Easter promotions, Halloween, Christmas, that type of thing where you have your own tabloid. Then you turn it into little articles on all the tenants at the shopping center. It’s kind of like a whole, you know, piece on the permission and reading more about the tenants and people, it draws over a thousand people to these events. Believe it or not, that’s the one old fashioned client we have. There’s one very true rule to marketing. If it works, don’t stop it. And that works, and we don’t stop it.
Russel:
I’m sure I could think real hard and try to argue that. But that line, if I have to think that hard, then maybe I’m trying too hard and you’re probably exactly right. Man, I miss tabloids. I used to love those when I was a kid. But I’m really glad to know, I think I’m glad to know that that’s still a successful form of marketing? I’m not sure. I’ll have to think about that one as well. One of the things that stuck out when I remember our first conversation was just, you know, a couple takeaways to me was, you really care about your clients and you really care about your team. Was that a learned process for you, going back to the beginning days of your agency, or do you feel like you carried that from the get go?
Ginger:
Thank you for, you know, picking up on that with me. I worked at several other advertising agencies that just, they would treat people just horribly. I started from the ground up and I can remember just thinking, wow, I can’t believe how rude they are to people and how they would treat them very demeaningly, like they didn’t know anything. I thought, if I run my own company, I always want to treat everybody with just ultimate respect from the ground up. That is something that I have done with creating this ad agency PCF international, I have never, ever micromanaged anybody that’s worked with me. I’m hard on them too. If they can’t cut the mustard, they’re not going to survive. But I outline, you know, what they need to do. I have a long chat with them when they start. I follow up with them. The other thing that I found is just telling someone when they’re doing a good job, just letting them know that, hey, you’re an integral part of our team. You’re doing a great job. And then the other critical aspect I think of running a marketing company is you have got to have a once a week meeting with your entire team. We have international hires as well, and so we have a Google meet conference call. I put out a big agenda and everybody knows that I’m going to grill them on every account in the agency. If they don’t have the work done, they’re going to be in trouble. That has really, really helped us to stay together as a team, to work together as a team. They know that, if one of us falters, we’re not going to be as good. I think that that has really helped us to succeed and to work better together. It also enables, people that are starting out in our company to see a vision to where they could be and to be able to grow with us.
Russel:
The quick summary or read between the lines, right? Is at the end of the day, nothing’s going to beat good old fashioned hardcore. Or I’m not even going to say hardcore, just Implementation of management, right? Not micromanagement and not under management, but just, just managing, staying on top of. I think one of the key things you said there as well, that really caught my attention, this really resonated with me and the agency business, I think even reinforced from the, if you’re familiar with the book, Radical Candor by Kim Scott that they talk about the idea of feedback and we’re all too often quick to give critical feedback or how this can be improved and then we limit our positive feedback to just thumbs up, good job, keep it up, that sort of thing. But that’s very generic and nondescript and how important it is to be just as specific in our positive feedback as we are in our negative feedback. But there’s something very wired in humans to not to naturally be that way. It a takes a very conscious effort.
Ginger:
Yeah. And one thing I will say, if you see a person in your company that’s doing something very well, like for example, they come up with ideas and maybe they’re not in creative or they write very well, you know, to give them an opportunity to try their hand at copywriting or to come up with some creative ideas because maybe they might want to be moved into creative and they could do very, very well in creative if you give them the opportunity to do that. That’s something that I’ve been able to do with our team as well. I think that’s a big part of the reason why I have some people that have worked with me for 20 years now. When you have people that stay at your company, you know you’re doing a good job.
Russel:
Is it 20 years or was it more than that? What is your longest standing employee?
Ginger:
20 years, a creative director. And he’s, he’s as good as it gets.
Russel:
That’s awesome. What do you do to celebrate anniversaries around your company? What does someone get for 20 years these days?
Ginger:
Yeah, uh, you know, I don’t do it that way. I celebrate their birthdays. Everybody that has a birthday in our company, they get a hundred dollars and then we give a bonus. I know bonuses, everybody’s saying, oh, you don’t get bonuses anymore. Well, I do. I give a year end bonus to everybody in the company. And then I base it on the longevity of years with their bonus.
Russel:
I don’t think my parents give me a hundred dollars anymore for my birthday. I’m intrigued.
Ginger:
Yeah, people seem to like that.
Russel:
I bet. Yeah, that’s a nice, that’s a little good, a little fun money. 28 years, obviously a lot of experience, been through a lot. What’s the big goal for the future? Are we trying to get to year 50? The first, I don’t, maybe won’t be the first, but one of the few 50 year agencies. What’s in store for you?
Ginger:
Things are going really well. The number one thing that I can say is you have to really love this business and you have to be excited by it and I am excited every day I get out of bed to come to work. I find our clients really exciting. And I think putting together, a client mix that you want to work on. I think we’ve all worked with clients where it just bores us to tears. I really focus on growth with client and products that I know we’re going to be excited by that, we’re going to be good at, and that we’re going to excel at. One of the clients, for example, is a big yacht. That’s exciting because, I can say to the owner, hey, we’d like to go for a sail around the Hawaiian islands the next time I’m there. And he’ll say no problem, Ginger. That’s great. In terms of looking ahead, I think growth is always something as an ad agency you want to do, but you want to make sure it’s controlled growth, because I’ve seen ad agencies grow to a point where their lives are just absolutely miserable, where they’re working, 18 hours a day. You want to be able with growth to have a team in place that can handle that and to still maintain, of course, the service level of your existing account. That’s always a challenge I would say is just, keeping your clients satisfied and growing. And with the growth that you’re still giving the great service to everybody.
Russel:
If anyone we should listen to about that, it certainly should be you. Cause talk to agency owners that have been in there far, far less amount of time that, grow weary of some of those things. But I really like what you said there of just, you gotta like the work you do and who you do it for and make sure we keep that at the forefront. And then, also heard there. We got to work in those perks too. If not else, what is an agency for? I mean, I can think back of some amazing, vicarious perks just by the nature of the clients we worked with and things like that. I didn’t get to sail around the Hawaiian islands though.
Ginger:
I know. Yeah. That’s, he’s, he’s a fun client. He really is. He’s a very demanding client, but he’s, he’s fun to work with.
Russel:
Offsets it with Hawaiian island trips. Would probably could ask you a million more questions and, and be all the better off for it. But, uh, we only have so much time. The last big question I ask folks is, are entrepreneurs born or are they made?
Ginger:
I love that question. I would say they’re made and the reason why I would say they’re made because I think you have to experience working at other jobs in the field that you have chosen to determine if you think you can do it better on your own. And for me, that’s what happened. I worked at a couple advertising agencies and I thought, I can do it better on my own, but I wouldn’t have known that had I not had the experience of working at other ad agencies. To me, I think they’re made. I definitely would say that it’s, it’s something I don’t think you’re… Sure, probably there’s people that are born where, like my sister, when she was young, she would go around the house saying she wants to be a doctor. And she’s a doctor. But, like, for me, I needed that experience to know that I wanted to start my own entrepreneurial business.
Russel:
Beautiful, beautiful. Well, I love that. If people want to know more about PCF international, where can they go?
Ginger:
Www.pcfinternational.com is a great starting point. We’re in the state of Florida, all over Florida and in the Hawaiian Islands and in some regions in California as well. And we do handle some international accounts.
Russel:
I’m picking up a theme there across those three, I’m guessing you like water and beaches.
Ginger:
Yes. Tropical stuff.
Russel:
Okay. Good to know. See, that’s a great motivation behind the business. Awesome, well, thank you so much for your time today, Ginger, sharing your 28 years of experience and I’m sure many more to come, so many great insights and takeaways today. I really thank you for taking your time today.
Ginger:
Thank you, Russel. It’s a real pleasure. I’m happy that I could speak with you today. I’m quite honored.
Russel:
Pleasure is all mine.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of An Agency Story podcast where we share real stories of marketing agency owners from around the world. Are you interested in being a guest on the show? Send an email to podcast@performancefaction.com. An Agency Story is brought to you by Performance Faction. Performance Faction offers services to help agency owners grow their business to 5 million dollars and more in revenue. To learn more, visit performancefaction.com.
Ginger:
The funniest and this is kind of mean, but it was an employee that showed up to this huge meeting that we had dressed completely inappropriately. I don’t know what she was thinking. I just had, I had to send her home to get her clothes changed. That was a little odd, I would say. Some of the clients saw her and were like, oh my word. And I was just, you know, it was embarrassing. I thought, wow, what was she thinking?
Russel:
Yeah. Was there a new policy the next day or shortly thereafter?
Ginger:
Yes. Yes, there was. In fact, we implemented a dress code. We didn’t think that we needed to have that, but she proved us wrong. It wasn’t funny at the time, but it’s something, you know, I can laugh at now.
Russel:
As many things in life are.
