Season 1, Episode 3: Vice President, Advertising Services, Donna Zolla

In this week's episode, we sit down with SCG's Vice President of Advertising Services, Donna Zolla! Donna and host Maddie Trumino discuss the history of advertising, the role of account management as the "face" of the agency, and why person-to-person interactions remains crucial in an increasingly digital world.

Transcript

Tom Marguccio 0:00

Welcome to Coffee and Tea with SCG, a podcast from the industry experts at SCG Advertising and PR. We are a full-service woman-owned agency that offers advertising, public relations, recruitment, marketing, and association management. In this season, we'll be chatting with some members of our team about their specialties. So grab your coffee and your tea, and let's brew up a good conversation.

Maddie Trumino 0:26

Hello, everyone. If you're wondering why I sound a little different today, it's because I do. The past few episodes you've been listening to my colleague, Lupe Dragon, but today I'm going to be your host. My name is Maddie Trumino, and in today's episode, we will be chatting with Donna Zolla, Vice President Advertising Account Director at SCG Advertising and Public Relations. Hi, Donna. Hello, Maddie. First question. Do you prefer coffee or tea? Oh, coffee. Me too. Love coffee. Did you have some this morning? Always. Me too. So I just want to kick this off by asking how many years have you been here?

Donna Zolla 1:02

It was just my 10-year anniversary.

Maddie Trumino 1:05

Fantastic. Congratulations.

Donna Zolla 1:06

Thank you. Went fast.

Maddie Trumino 1:08

Oh, I'm sure. So, Donna, I wanted to ask you, most people think of advertising as being exclusively about creative visual concepts, but that isn't your professional focus, is it? Can you explain a little bit about what you do?

Donna Zolla 1:20

Yeah, that's the million-dollar question. And most people, my friends, my family still ask me what do I do? Because people always, when they think of advertising, they think of Don Draper, the guy from Bewitched way back who did the slogans, the creative part of the business. And when you hear about art director, copywriter, creative director, you can pretty much figure out what that is. And an account person is it's very different. It is drier. We are the liaison between the agency and the client. So on the face of the agency to the client, anything the client wants or needs comes through the account person first. So in a way, we're like the general contractor to the whole agency. Client needs creative, if they need research, if they need media. I will then work with our different departments to get that going and formulate the strategy where it all fits together that way.

Maddie Trumino 2:25

Wow, that's amazing. So you're kind of like the quarterback of the team. You kind of keep everything together and organized, which I'm sure can leave a lot on your plate.

Donna Zolla 2:32

Yes, that's true. Yes, yes. I'm not a football person, but I understand that analogy.

Maddie Trumino 2:39

Well, today in 2024, what's the single most challenging aspect of your role?

Donna Zolla 2:44

Everything now is so digital focused, and it's a very crowded space. Every client needs to be in the digital world. And it gets harder and harder to separate yourself and your client because there's so much competition there. Where let's say if you're on a billboard, you can stand alone on a billboard and stand out. Even with TV, your commercial can stand out more because there's only so many per allocated per slot. So in the digital world, it's much harder now to recommend campaigns where we'll get to the right target audience for the client and make them stand out and have them ideally get the results that we want to see for them. And this year's even more challenging because it's an election year. So overhearing the TV at my house the other day, every commercial was an election.

Maddie Trumino 3:44

Yeah.

Donna Zolla 3:44

You know, for this candidate, that candidate on the local level, the state level, the national level, it is more challenging and the advertising is more expensive too. So it definitely is a challenge.

Maddie Trumino 3:56

Yeah.

Donna Zolla 3:57

So we're almost recommending to some clients, let's just hold off around, you know, the weeks leading into the election, save your money until it's all over, and then we can make a splash again.

Maddie Trumino 4:09

Yeah. You know, something you said kind of had me wondering. What do you think the best way to stand out in the digital space is?

Donna Zolla 4:18

It really comes down to the best message. You need to have a clear message. It can't be a murky message. And the message has to relate to the product. It can't be funny because you want to be funny or you want to get more likes, but no one remembers what the brand was. That's a fail then. You really have to be strategic and come up with a campaign that resonates with who the target is and makes your clients stand out and play up what's different and better about them.

Maddie Trumino 4:53

Absolutely. I agree. So now that we've talked about the challenges, let's bring it to a more positive note and look at the successes. Professionally speaking, what do you consider to be a home run?

Donna Zolla 5:04

A home run is what we always establish with any client is what are your KPIs, your key performance indicators, what are your goals? And if our campaign meets that, it's great. And the best part is if a client thanks us and says, thank you for being part of our team, being our marketing partner, because sometimes clients treat agency people like vendors. And we're so much more than a vendor. We pride ourselves on being part of our client's marketing team to help them succeed. So when they in turn come to us and just say, thank you for being our partner, it means so much. You know, just even getting a thank you because people are so busy, nobody says thank you anymore these days.

Maddie Trumino 5:55

That's very true. What do you think are some ways that you can get that thank you from a client? Like little ways aside from the work that you can do to get that reciprocation from your clients.

Donna Zolla 6:06

It really still comes down to results. You know, you you you have to be proactive with clients. You you always want to be giving them more ideas than what they even asked for, or give them things that they haven't thought of or about to ask, but you're recommending it to them. So that helps in terms of then you get the respect of a client that way, not just taking orders or, you know, doing the bare minimum. That that doesn't work.

Maddie Trumino 6:35

Right. Kind of being ahead of the curve with the client.

Donna Zolla 6:38

Yeah, you always have to be, yeah.

Maddie Trumino 6:41

Absolutely. Everything in the world today seems to be rapidly evolving on a constant basis. And I'm sure that goes for advertising as much as anything else. Would you try looking ahead and telling me what area of expertise will look like in a decade in the future?

Donna Zolla 6:56

Wow, that's that's a really big question. Right off the top of my head, I would say AI. AI is evolving. We still don't know what it's going to do to us, how it's going to grow. Will it help us? Will it hurt us? Probably both. So that's something that we're still navigating here. So within 10 years, we'll definitely have a better handle on it. You know, I'd like to see again, we are in the digital age, the technology age. I would love to see us getting back to some more traditional forms of advertising like print, magazines. It's visual, going back to your question about creative, and you know, is something more what I do is more than just visual things, but it's visual things can be very impactful and you can't not see it. So I'd love to see us almost in a retro way go back to some of the things that worked before that just got lost in the digital space and come back to that.

Maddie Trumino 8:04

Well, everything always comes back, just like fashion, which I know you're also a big fan of. So maybe we will see some retro things return. Yes. Um, with that being said, what do you think are things that'll never change as far as advertising?

Donna Zolla 8:17

I think the the people aspect of our business, we are people driven. You know, some companies you could sell off its equipment, you could move the factory to Mexico. In advertising, it's still the people that run it. And without the people, there is no agency. You can't service a client well if you're a machine. It just does not work that way. And that's what makes our business fun. All the different personalities and the types of people and what we create. So I don't think that will ever change. I think we can't be outsourced in a way.

Maddie Trumino 8:55

Definitely. Couldn't have said it better myself. Thank you so much for joining me today, Donna.

Donna Zolla 9:00

Sure. Ready for coffee?

Tom Marguccio 9:08

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