Reading Time: 2 minutes
Reading Time: 2 minutes

Bagging Big Clients like Pepsi, Patagonia, and Pacha with Capsule’s Aaron Keller

This episode, Co-Founder and CEO of Capsule Aaron Keller talks about how to get big clients for your marketing agency, how to know when it’s the right time to scale your marketing agency, and the positive effects of having a remote team.

Aaron Keller is a former Adjunct Professor of Marketing at the University of St. Thomas and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD).

 
Aaron is now the CEO at Capsule where he works with clients to solve complex marketing challenges, identify new revenue opportunities, and refresh lagging brands. They’ve worked with some big names including international brands (Pepsi, Patagonia), young brands (Pacha, Hydro Flask), and experienced brands (Red Wing Shoes, Leatherman).
 
Aaron is also the author of three books, two in a series called Design Matters and he recently co-authored The Physics of Brand. Here are a few of the topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Masters in Marketing Agency:
 
  • Why it’s easier to coauthor a book online than it is to write one together in person.
  • The positive effects of having a remote team.
  • What ‘special projects’ involve.
  • How to get a customer like Patagonia.
  • Getting your first clients.
  • When’s the right time to scale your agency.
  • Why you should hire a diverse workforce.
  • Common hiring mistakes.
 
Resources:
 
Connecting with Aaron Keller:
 
Connecting with the host:
 
Quotables:
  • 9:50 – “We had solved some of the other meaty problems that they had seen, actually Smart Wool was one of the big ones that we had spent 7 or 8 years working with Smart Wool reducing the waste in their packaging, reducing the time to create their package, so taking waste out of the system and also simplifying the process of communicating with the person.”
  • 14:14 – “We’ve done a lot of oddly enough work in commodities which I always find interesting because it’s the opposite of brands. You take something like a commodity and turn it into a brand, what turns it into a brand? Well, packaging can definitely do that you’re aiding navigation you’re saving people time you’re delivering a high-quality product and you’re no longer a commodity and you’re becoming something of value that has margin.”
  • 24:44 – “You can’t solve problems that you blame on other people, you say that’s what they did then your basically absolving yourself of the problem and whether or not you take on the guilt and all the other crap that comes with you making the mistake that’s not what’s important it’s taking on the ok I can solve this, next time I’m not going to do this or this to not have that problem happen again but t if you blame it on somebody else you’re never going to try and resolve that, you’re never going to work on the problem.”
  • 25:26 – “Sometimes you have difficult clients, you have clients that you’re like they’re really hard, they’re mean to us or they don’t respect our work or they push us really hard on deadlines and other stuff and I say there’s no client we can’t take on, we can’t solve and unlock because you need to keep looking at what are they looking for, you think they’re coming at you because of this but it might just be because their day is not going great and what they really need is for someone to talk to about it.”