 Live from Seattle, Washington, it's theCUBE. Covering Smartsheet Engaged 2019. Brought to you by Smartsheet. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Smartsheet Engaged here in Seattle, Washington. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, along with my co-host, Jeff Frick. We're joined by Mae McCutcheon. She is the program director at OvalV. OvalV, thank you so much for coming on. My pleasure. So, OvalV is a huge name in the advertising industry, but why don't you give our viewers a little bit of background about what you do and the company itself? One of the fun little stories that I like to tell is something that our founder said so many years ago. If you hire people that are smaller than you, you end up with tiny people in your company, right? You want to hire someone bigger than you and you end up a company of giants. And I feel like that really sums up OvalV. It's such a big name in the industry. 70 years we've been around. I'm program director, I work in operations. I also work in resource management. I like to think that I'm a utility player. You know, wherever the fire is, I'll go and try to help out. Smartsheets made that a lot easier for me in the last couple of years. My origin story of Smartsheet is I was working with an account and someone had to leave suddenly and they asked me to step in and do some of the account executive duties. I had no idea what some of those were. I am lifelong operations. I am not lifelong advertising. So, I was like trial by fire, but I had recently been introduced to Smartsheet. So, I had this tool and I went to meetings for like two weeks and I gathered every piece of data I could. And then after that time, like images came out of the mist and suddenly like the world made sense and my boss one day was walking by and saw like a pie chart, what's that? And we're like, oh, I just made this because it's helping me learn about the account, right? And he was like, oh, we're making an appointment with my boss and like on it went from there. So, you should have been in operations forever. So, what brought you to Smartsheet? Clearly, you've worked with other tools. You've worked in complicated projects before. What was so different this time? I would say the ease of use and the instant adoptability with other people and the functionality being able to attach a file. And this is long before there were dashboards, before any of that stuff, just attaching a file. The comments on the line, really ease of use. That's a big one. Yeah. So in your line of work, there are so many different assets that you need to work on and the way that the advertising industry has changed so much, you only have so much time to get the customer's attention. Can you talk a little bit about just those changes and then how that's changed, what you need to do and what your team needs to do on a day-to-day basis? We spent a lot of time tracking. We still spend a lot of time tracking and customers will say, you guys talk to us too much and then they'll say, we didn't get the right information. So I think I've talked to other people here at the conference and nobody really wants to say, my company's having a difficult time grappling with this torrent of data that we're all living with. I miss things for my kid because I miss the email in my inbox about the school, even though I'm looking for it. So I think it's a large problem that a lot of companies are dealing with and nobody really wants to admit it. But we're finding that we're changing the way we work and it's making a big difference. Like the tools that we used to use don't apply anymore because they don't make any sense. Like, you know, if you have like a shared folder on a drive, good luck. You know, we'll have a flashlight and like a, you know, you're never going to find it. So these kinds of tools, Smartsheet is helping us, is helping us really change the way we work. The other thing too, the complexity of which you guys deliver. You made a nice customer video for the Smartsheet team and really goes through on some campaign for a shoe or something. You know, you kind of got your core theme that you develop but you guys are making so many derivative assets for so many derivative platforms to be used in such different ways that kind of the variation, I assume the version control, the variance based on geo or whatever the speed, completely different working situation. We're very excited about Slope, the asset tracking software that Smartsheet has purchased and I think we've started a pilot and we're really excited to see how that works out because that's something that all of the stuff that we're building in Smartsheet will then be able to talk to this other system. So the tracking system will be able to talk to revenue projections or whatever else you wanted to talk to, you know, of capacity planning, resource management and yes, of all the versions that we have to deal with, there's two pieces of the versioning. One is like, what do we need to deliver to the client today? Do we have the right version? We got to ship this out, it's going to print, you don't want the wrong one going out but then also two, three years from now if somebody comes and says, hey, can you give me the version that shipped? And everyone's like, oh, I don't know what, it's one of these, I don't know which one because in our industry, people rotate off accounts. You work on one account for a number of years and then you decide you want some B2B expertise or some consumer products good expertise and the company's very good about enriching people's careers that way and moving them around but that means they're taking their knowledge with them. So one of my favorite things about Smartsheet is not only does it help us track and there's transparency and automation and all that stuff but when we finish a project, if we've used it correctly, it's beautifully archived. So not only can you find all of the assets, even the little itty bitty ones, but you can see a chat trail on which one was used, this time and you can, I like also you can right click on a cell and see the cell history, like who made that note or who put that number in, it's perfect. It's a mini handbook that you can hand over to on-ramp someone onto a new project. Like if you could talk to the person that was there that did it. The intuition that's there is great. So what does this do in terms of changing the culture of your organization and the ways in which employees are interacting with each other? I'm really excited about this. I'm really excited about the culture piece because I'm going to talk about it internally and then I'll talk about it with clients. Internally, if you're a business leader and you need to get your revenue projections from five markets or regions or whatever you want to call them, you need these numbers. Like every month give me these numbers. So we go down to them and we say, this is it. I need you to fill out this column and the months. That's it. They can then, with Smartsheet, do whatever else they want with the sheet. They can add columns like some of them track quarterly and some of them track by behalf and some of them weekly. They can do all that as long as my numbers are in and I have that in report. So all of these cultures are slightly different. Ogilvy has a culture, but so do our clients. And when you work with a client closely, you adopt part of that culture. So I don't want to say to anybody in the company, this is how it's going to be and this is how you have to do it. I think that kills morale. I think it kills creativity. I think it kills innovation. So that's one thing that I love about Smartsheet is it helps you preserve culture. It helps even underscore it. And do you think it's made you as a team also more wanting to lean on each other in different ways in the sense of wanting to, unlocked creativity piece is what I'm trying to get at here. Creativity and accountability. Yes, I think it's much easier to define who's responsible for what with that clear communication. You know, you can get a card view and you'd be like, that's literally your lane. That's what it's called. It's called your lane. So I think that helps people. Like I know what I'm accountable for and I know what I need to do. And so I'm going to be better at it. And I also am going to have a better picture of the whole project instead of just what I'm doing. So knowing where it's coming from and where it's going to go after in that context makes me better. And are you seeing one of the big themes for all these types of software is that, you know, it frees up people from doing less mundane, less routine, less rote kind of your example of rolling up the numbers so that it frees you up to do higher value activities. You know, are you seeing that? How's it manifested itself in your guys ability to deliver? The automation, let's see. Let's see how that, we haven't, I was talking about, I said I would get back to the client a minute ago and I didn't. I can't think of a time when we use, we use automation a lot internally. I'm trying to think about what we do with clients because client facing is obviously a little bit different. But internally is probably the harder challenge though, right? It's easy to get excited about a new client. I think it's harder to get excited about another day on week three on an eight week project that you're just grinding through. I kind of love them. I don't know why. I love the internal stuff. I think because of the camaraderie and because of the team building, I sent out, I used a form recently. Asked some people that I've been working with how they feel about this new project. And it was so easy. I mean, it was like, I had fun making the form. And I'm happy to say that I'm also having fun reading the responses because they're mostly good and some of them are critical but it's delivered so well. The comments are like, oh, we needed to hear that. We can actually make this better now. That's great. Seeing the big picture though, I want to hear as a business leader what that means to you. And in particular, what it was like before when you didn't have full information and you couldn't exactly get the real time status report and understand what needed to be done and what wasn't working so well. We had people working off of different sort of playbooks. So you have one department and they know what their focus is and they know what they're doing. And another department has a different responsibility. They go to a meeting and they kind of hear different things because they're thinking about, what am I going to be doing with this? And the other one's thinking about, how am I going to do it? And so that you can really run into problems because then you have people that are on divergent paths. And so now if everyone's working off the same document, you don't have that problem anymore. Does that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah. All right, so I want to shift gears a little bit, Mae. And talk about where we are kind of as a society in terms of the attention economy, right? That's the hardest thing to get these days is people's attention. I think in your little video, you guys talked about the number of impressions per day, which of course is infinite and the time for impression is just basically zero plus a little bit more. And you guys are right at the leading edge of trying to capture that attention, facing that challenges. I wonder if you can just kind of speak generally as the evolution of that and the way that messaging and images and kind of types of engagement have to change when your opportunities are very, very short, but they're spread across a lot of different things. And if it's targeted right, the opportunities for a match on a good target, as someone said, if it's a good match, it's magical. And how you kind of look at the challenge and the opportunity of operating in 2019 where attention is so hard to get. I think to give you a really good answer to that question, I would need someone from the media department, someone from strategy, someone from creative, and someone from the CEO's office. But I- We'll be in New York in two weeks. We'll get that going. There's so much that goes into it and clients are so different. Some want this really long, long list of different deliverables that they want and it's on a tight pace. And then some are more interested like, oh, just like an overall brand. We just want some brand strategy. One thing that we do well, and that is our core, is we make brands matter. That is the Ogilvy Ethos right there. So no matter what's going on with the industry as it's changing, and this week it's banners, next week it's social or whatever, we're always focused on the brand first and whatever makes sense on that day, in that era, we will choose the platform and the software and whatever else that helps us best service our clients. It's still staying to that core mission around the brand, the brand values, what it represents. That is the number one thing, yeah. So what's next? I mean, when you're here at the Smart Sheet Engage and you're talking and hearing about how other companies use it and how other teams are finding new collaborations, and what are you going to come away with? What are you going to bring back to your team in New York? I think the most exciting thing for me so far has been, I mean, I love the multi-select dropdown and I mean, there's a lot of great things, but when they talked about a little bit of a touch on AI and how the platform will be watching the way you work and I don't want to use language, people get so creeped out, you know? Like, are you watching it, what are you watching? No, it's just like, you know, following a pattern that it will suggest things. So I think that's going to help search and then it's going to know like, well, every other time you ran that report, then you wanted a dashboard, want me to kick it off for you, I am really excited about that. I think, because right now the automation is good and it's getting better, right? You have like, you can set by time, you can set reminders by date and lots of great things that you can do with the forums, but I think that AI piece is really what's going to make a change. How would you say that your team feels about that? I mean, you hear that people have so much trepidation around AI and the robots are coming. I don't talk to them about it. I just pretend like it's not there. It's just something you don't have to do. Right, right, right. I mean, but do they see it as the potential benefits that could come from it? Yes, I think a lot of people already in a recent project, everyone's like, the drudgery is gone. It's just gone. And sometimes I feel like, because one thing I ask them is, do you feel like you're spending more time on this or do you feel like you're spending less time and do you feel like you're spending more time but you're more informed and better to do your job? Right, so sometimes it's both. Sometimes I spend less time now that I'm using Smartsheet. Some people spend more time because they're getting more information that they need it, you know? Right, right. I love your example how you just need that one cell filled in and whatever it takes you, the individual to get to that number, you don't really care. I don't care. The flexibility. So you can organize your thoughts, your way of working, your way of organizing information, whatever makes sense for you to get to that answer. That flexibility is so important and I see it. Every team that I give this, you know, I have one document I need, six numbers a month, it's all I need. Six numbers a month. And every sheet is different. And I've told them, I'm like, well, you're the admin and you can make all these changes that you wanted to, and it's a little bit risky, you know? What if they delete one of my columns? Well then I'll go and put it back and tell them, don't do that. But everybody does it differently. Somebody took the name column and put it on the end. I mean, whatever floats your boat, you know? Dude, do you bring them together at some point to say, here's how you did it, here's how you did it? You know, here's the best practices, maybe you guys, you know, Susie over here did it this way, seems to work really well. I do one on one whenever I can. I really like it. I like the engagement, you get to know someone. I also say, my sick file has my cell phone. You can Slack me, you can call me, you can text me, middle of the night, doesn't matter, we're here. Like, I have two clients, you know? There's the clients that we service in the world, the other companies, but then for me, my clients are the employees, and the employees that are servicing those clients. That's great. Great. And as you said, when the drudgery is gone, that makes four people who want to come to work and who are more satisfied, so then they give more of themselves during the work day, and it does become a virtual circle. They're also more relaxed, you know? Because I think we were alluding to this earlier, it's like before we were using Smartsheet, you weren't always sure, like some project was going to jump out from behind a lamppost on your way home at night, and ruin your life for a day, you know? So now we can see that guy from far off, we're like, ah, I got my eye on you, you're not going to get me. And it gives us what I call the Smartsheet calm, you know, like we know, like everybody knows what the schedule is from here to the end of the year, maybe even for into 2020 and 2021. So we're starting to scope for the next year, and we're setting the Smartsheets up for people like, oh my God, there's the view, it's beautiful. Right, right, I think we need to create a new Smartsheet yoga pose for you now. I mean, let's do it, let's do it. Do you know what I'm always on the hunt for? The weirdest use of Smartsheet. What's the weirdest you've found so far? The weirdest, somebody mentioned something about a writer who uses Smartsheet to track all the ways they procrastinate from writing. That's pretty good, pretty good. Another woman used it for her Thanksgiving shopping. I'm like, okay, that's like, next level cooking as far as I'm concerned. And then also on the way home from the grocery shopping for Thanksgiving, the wines she was going to buy. So she's tracking her wines and her food. That's good though for the pairings and which, I like that, I mean, yeah. You could do like a little, imagine that with your card view, like oh, the Merleau, like we put it over with the turkey or whatever. News you can use. Me, McCutchen, thank you so much for coming on theCUBE. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Thank you. I'm Rebecca Knight for Jeff Frick. Stay tuned, you are watching theCUBE.