[Podcast] Vulnerability Isn't Weakness, It's a Trust-Building Superpower (With Chris Schermer)

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Ryan

Imagine if Joni Mitchell had built a lead gen campaign for Blue. It wouldn’t be flashy or full of clickbait. It’d be a series of raw, intimate letters that slowly pulled you in until she felt like she was telling you a story.

That’s the kind of connection we’re talking about today, how vulnerability isn’t just emotional, it’s effective. We’ll dive into why showing honesty builds trust, and why authenticity isn’t just relatable, it’s a smart, strategic move.

Welcome back to On the Record. Michael, you and I are joined today by the wonderful Chris Schermer of Schermer. Chris, welcome to the show.

Chris

Thank you, guys. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Ryan

Hey, we’re excited to have you, Chris. We’re going to talk a little bit about vulnerability, and not considering it as a weakness, but perhaps a strength. And even better yet, maybe a superpower.

And speaking of superpowers – this record by the lovely, the one and only Joni Mitchell, Blue – we’re also going to talk about it and its parallel to our topic today as well.

So Chris, before we do so, would you just tell us a little bit about your background, twenty-eight years of experience being an agency owner?

Chris
Sure, yeah, you bet. Twenty-eight years, a long time. We’re a B2B agency here in Minneapolis, nationally known. I’m proud to say we have clientele all over the world. SAP, we work with Best Buy Ads, a retail media network, Red Wing Shoe Company, Pearson, Sventum, Logitech, and a number of others.

B2B is our main focus; it has been since we’ve started. And there are a lot of similarities to the vulnerability theme that we’re going to talk about today in B2B.

One of the things that I find is that it’s not very easy for B2B companies to be vulnerable. We all know that, right? We’re trying to show clients that we can lead them with confidence.

And so that vulnerability doesn’t oftentimes come through in our clients’ and our industry’s marketing. But there are times when it does and I think it really is a superpower when that happens.

Ryan

Yeah, we’re going to get much further into that as we go on throughout the discussion. You, good sir, are going to take us through a little bit about that vulnerability and what Joni was going through when she created this record and how it ladders up in today’s discussion.

Michael 

Absolutely, yeah. That’s one of the big reasons that we chose Blue for this episode, because of how vulnerable she was. She was going through two major public breakups: one with James Taylor, one with Graham Nash of Crosby, Stills & Nash. And you can hear it in this record. It’s all about loss. It’s about moving forward, right?

What was amazing was, in interviews with Joni, she said, “I didn’t feel like I had anything to hide anymore because of these very public breakups.” She felt like, “Well, now I can just write authentically.” Because everyone already knew everything, or at least, you know, what the media knew.

And there was so much talk about it that she felt like, “You know what, let me just put it all out there. Let me tell my side of the story.” I felt like it related so well to this topic, because sometimes brands need to lean into that. Sometimes we need to change the public perception.

But you don’t do that through brute force. You do that through relational components, like vulnerability.

This felt like such a perfect record to discuss how brands start to leverage vulnerability to build customer relationships. And Chris, you had some great ties back to this record, and I know you’ve got a case study to share with us today.

Chris

Oh, I love Joni, yeah. Especially, I mean, Both Sides Now is probably one of my favorite songs of all time.

But this album, Blue, my first introduction to it was when I was a junior in high school. I had a humanities teacher named Mr. Goodnature, of all names, and he really was a good-natured person.

He would introduce us to all the eclectic arts that were out there. Movies, musicals, and folk music. And he was my introduction to this album, Joni Mitchell’s Blue – and to James Taylor, Jim Croce, Cat Stevens, all of those artists.

At the time, I told you, it didn’t really strike a chord with me. It was a little over my head when I was seventeen years old. But it wasn’t long after, when I was in college – I was an English major, really exploring poetry and literature – that I found myself gravitating back to folk.

And the poetry of that music, especially Joni Mitchell’s, is just inherent in what she does. I’ve been a fan ever since.

Ryan

Did you ever tell Mr. Goodnature about your circling back to it?

Chris

You know, we did stay in touch for a long time. I’ve given him a lot of credit for where I am right now and he should feel that love from me. Because I became an English teacher in a lot of respects because of that guy. And that led me to pursuing creative writing, and that led me to advertising and marketing … and here we are.

Michael

Amazing.

Ryan

A synergistic pathway. I love that. Well, we’d love to talk a little bit more about how you start as an agency, Chris. We talked about how vulnerability can be quite a superpower if businesses are willing to lean into it. How do you convince folks to do that? Especially long-standing, reputable brands that might be a little stuck in their ways.

Chris

Like I said at the top of our episode here, it’s hard. Because again, we have to lead with confidence. And every B2B client that we have, whenever we get a brief on a new campaign, it usually has the word “confident” in it.

You know, “We want a confident tone.” “We want to display confidence in what we do.”

Reliability, confidence. Those are qualities that are innate in most B2B brands. But if you take the next step into how they actually work together, that is, these companies and their customers, it becomes very entangled in B2B.

I mean, you become co-creators in a lot of cases around what that product is going to be or how it’s going to perform. So I think that brands need to take that step into vulnerability, to show what kind of a good partner they can be.

Because without that, you’re just putting a veneer up. And it’s everything behind the veneer that really makes a great B2B brand and relationship.

Ryan

Absolutely. You’ve introduced vulnerability to Leadpages in a little bit of a different way. You take an MVP mindset from your product delivery as well. That is vulnerability. And it sometimes shows up in those early user experiences. Maybe your version, Michael?

Michael

Yeah, I think bringing users along for the ride, or customers really, along for the ride is really important.

We’re not perfect. We don’t get everything right. And I think if we can start to admit that, it actually frees us up to do more creative work, to take more risks. Because if our customers expect us to push the boundaries, they know not every boundary we push is going to be a home run.

But if they expect us to do it, it opens us up for failure, right? We’re allowed to fail in that capacity because we’re trying to discover something new for them. And if we can bring our customers along for that ride and be okay with a little failure. I think you’ve got a great saying here – I don’t want to steal it – but that failure is where we learn, right?

If we can be open to that as a company, it allows each person within the organization to take a little bit more risk and not have to be so concerned with perfection.

Chris

Absolutely, yeah. That saying you were referencing, we were talking earlier, it’s a mantra at Schermer is that we never lose; we always learn. And I didn’t make that up, but I fully embrace that mindset. Going back all the way to high school, I was a wrestler, and I was terrible when I first started. But I just refused to quit. I dedicated myself to always getting better.

And I still maintain that same mindset at the agency. We’re constantly changing. We’re constantly evolving. We’re constantly failing.

Hopefully people don’t see that very often, but we own up to it when we do because it’s a learning opportunity.

And I try to teach my team that as well. I always say, “Nothing’s going to get you fired here except gross negligence and gross incompetence.” But that second one, incompetence, that’s my fault, because I hired you!

Michael

[laughs] That’s great.

Chris

So yeah, I think that vulnerability is how people get better. Without it, your mindset becomes rigid and fixed, not a growth mindset. And in marketing and brand, it’s the same.

Ryan

I want to pull on something we were just talking about off camera. So, connection is often found through deep vulnerability, right? It allows us to have these really meaningful interactions.

You talked about Red Wing and this really unique use case where you found a different kind of value prop, if you will. You took us through a story I thought was really compelling. I’d love for you to share that with the listeners and viewers.

Chris

Sure. We’ve been working with Red Wing Shoe Company, a great Minnesota brand, for the last seven years.

We helped them introduce “Red Wing for Business,” which is their industrial division: basically a platform for offering safety footwear programs to major corporations and crews. And our target, our customer we’re marketing to, is the safety director, because they’re responsible for putting safety footwear on their crews and employees.

So when we were charged with doing the first-ever brand campaign for them not too long ago, they asked us for something that would really get attention.

We couldn’t just talk about Red Wing, even though it was a brand campaign. We wanted to celebrate the safety director and their role. But a lot of times, those crews don’t always have the greatest relationship with their safety manager. They appreciate them, but they also kind of… don’t appreciate all the protocols, all the requirements, and so on. 

So we actually leaned into that.

In talking with a lot of tradespeople, one of the things they said they appreciated most about their safety director was that person sends them home safe at night. They get to have dinner with their wife and kids, knowing they’re safe.

We leaned into that and came up with a campaign called “Thanks for Nothing.” And what we did was say, if nothing happens on-site, the safety director’s done their job.

So we put that out there. We invited tradespeople and construction workers to send messages to their safety directors thanking them for “nothing.”

We got all sorts of user-generated content where these men and women really played along. They’d record themselves on their phones and upload to a site, saying all these anecdotes, like, “You’re a pain in the butt sometimes,” or “You’ve got too many rules.” But then at the end, they’d say, “But you send me home safe. Thanks for nothing.”

And it was just… it was really authentic. It took the vulnerability of acknowledging that safety directors and crews don’t always have a perfect relationship, and we put that tension right out front.

Michael

That’s fantastic. 

Ryan

Some of the simplest, most succinct copywriting is the hardest to get to, but you hit the nail on the head there, it sounds like.

Chris

Yeah, thank you.

Michael

Yeah, and it takes a little bit of vulnerability, that kind of tongue-in-cheek moment even for the safety directors, to admit, “I’m not the most popular person around.” But if I do my job well and nothing goes wrong…

Chris
That’s right, there’s pride in that.

Michael

Not everyone wants to admit that either. It’s nice to lean into that relationship. And what a fantastic campaign.

Ryan

As we continue to ladder up the conversation, one of the things that’s at the crux of any great brand is trust.

You yourself, my friend, just launched a rebrand with Leadpages. It’s as much about reidentifying the category you align with as it is about building some trust along the way, maybe even exposing some of those vulnerabilities.

Could you take the listeners and viewers through a little bit of the process that’s led to Leadpages’ new voice and positioning, similar to what Chris talked about with Red Wing?

Michael

Yeah, absolutely. So, we looked at our customer base and realized we were only talking to one segment of it. We were talking to solopreneurs and entrepreneurs, but we weren’t talking to small businesses, medium businesses, and even enterprise businesses that use Leadpages every day.

And so with this rebrand, we wanted to better speak to the teams that leverage Leadpages.

I don’t know if we’ve quite found that vulnerable spot yet, but we’re certainly looking to expand our messaging, not just to a singular audience, but to better represent the entirety of folks who have been subscribed to Leadpages for quite a long time, but maybe felt ignored along the way.

Chris

You know, something you just mentioned there, you said you don’t know that you’ve really necessarily got that vulnerability in the brand yet. But I think that in B2B, the job we’re trying to do is, like, I don’t get up every day and say, “I can’t wait to do another campaign.”

What we wake up and try to do is create conversations.

Even having this kind of podcast, where you’re talking about vulnerability, it’s authentic. It’s vulnerable in and of itself. And that represents your brand. It’s a deeper conversation, not just a brand campaign.

And I think that’s something for anyone listening to take away: Campaigns are often about what we do and what we can do for you … and sure, that displays confidence.

But marketing should lead to conversations: sales conversations, content, all sorts of things that can be more realistic, more vulnerable, more authentic. That’s really the job of a brand: to introduce and set up a conversation. That’s the job of marketing.

Ryan

I love that. That’s fantastic. Now, Schermer as a brand, has it always been what you intended it to be, or has it evolved immensely over twenty-eight years? I’m going to guess “evolution,” but maybe tell us a little bit about that journey, because the agency stands on its own two feet and in a reputable fashion.

Chris

Well, thanks. You’re right, evolution is the word. When I started the agency, I was very young, actually. I’d only had one job out of college: I worked for a grocery company called SuperValu, in their advertising group.

My job was managing programs and marketing campaigns for retailers. I loved that customer interaction, but I didn’t love working at a large company. It just wasn’t my nature. My nature is one of rebellion and not rule-following. So I knew I wanted to start an agency.

I jumped in. I had a partner for the first ten years – great guy. We didn’t intend to be a B2B agency when we first started. We thought we’d be retail, maybe some healthcare.

But we had this one B2B client from the very beginning. And they would often ask us to do things that weren’t just about design or creative, but about product strategy, go-to-market strategy, product portfolio strategy.

And I found those to be worthy problems to solve. My mind really enjoyed that. The harder the problem was, the fewer agencies wanted to compete for that kind of work. So I looked around this town – and this is back in the late ’90s, early 2000s – and Minneapolis is amazing when it comes to agencies. You can’t compete with the big consumer brand-oriented ones. So I thought, You know what? I like this client. I like B2B. I like solving hard problems. Let’s do it.

And we focused on it within the first two years, and that’s been us ever since.

Michael

So you’ve been B2B since then?

Chris

B2B ever since.

Michael

Very cool.

Chris

Yeah, and I’ve got to toot my own horn for a second. Just about a half hour before I came here, we found out we’re again a finalist for the Association of National Advertisers’ B2B Small Agency of the Year, our third year in a row, and seventh in the last ten.

Ryan

It’s a heck of an afternoon for you, and now we’ve given you a microphone to celebrate it!

Chris

[laughs] Exactly.

Ryan

I love how you picked the hardest problems to solve and that became one of your core tenets. That’s usually where success finds itself. The easy stuff’s been long taken, as we know.

For those who’ve been running agencies for some time, or aspire to do so, what’s some of the sage advice you can pass along after twenty-eight years of doing this work?

Chris

Oh man, take care of your people before your clients. That’s key. Every day, we go to work trying to serve our clients – and that’s important – but I’ve told my team, and I know it for a fact: I don’t have a business if it isn’t for my people.

I also need clients, sure, but it’s the people who keep me in business for twenty-eight years. So I’m really grateful. And I think being grateful is the right attitude to have as a business owner, so you don’t take anything or anybody for granted, clients and team included.

Ryan

I know you carry a similar mantra, Michael The investment in people is what you know will serve you and the business well into the future. Maybe talk a little about that process and methodology?

Michael

Yeah, I mean, every decision we make within the organization is driven by an individual. I can’t make every decision we face … as much as I might want to try. But we really are the collection of our organization, and it’s incredibly important to have everyone aligned, and to continue investing in folks to make sure they’re up to date as well.

We won’t adopt AI if our people don’t adopt AI.

So if we’re going to compete, we have to first compete internally, and be the best versions of ourselves at work. We talked about this last season with Thomas Knoll and the coaching conversation, and it rings true.

Innovation comes from within the organization. So we need our people aligned, especially now. We’ve made it twelve years. Can we make it twenty-eight? I don’t know.

Chris

You will. You will. From what I hear, it sounds like you’re on your way.

Ryan

Chris, we’ve talked about AI a lot this season and for good reason. It’s topical, of course. There’s a lot being produced by AI. But the authenticity surrounding that work is probably something that’s… polarizing. And my guess is, you have an opinion or two to share on the topic.

Chris

I do. I do. I think that anybody resisting the usage of AI in marketing is not going to be in marketing for very much longer. That’s a scary proposition, but it’s the right attitude to have. We have to embrace it.

However, what I’m starting to see now is AI being used very effectively for production shortcuts, for efficiency, for measurement.

Where I don’t like AI as much is in original content creation. I just find it inauthentic.

And relating it back to Joni Mitchell, everything she put out on this album, and in general, was her. It’s her thoughts. It’s her voice. It’s authentically hers, and unique because of it. I worry that brands are going to start using AI to create at scale and “personalize” in such a way that it just won’t be authentic.

Michael

Interesting.

Chris

Now, I think AI can be used to magnify and amplify authentic content, to personalize it, localize it, adapt it. That’s how it should be used. But I’m a bit of a purist when it comes to a brand’s voice and how that should come across. I think that should be something that’s felt, not just produced.

Ryan

Yeah, I like that. What about your thoughts, good sir, on AI and its usage in authenticity?

Michael

I mean, I think that’s spot on. There needs to be a root, something human at the core. That’s what we talk about all the time: How do we accentuate human creation and output, but maintain it?

We wouldn’t be talking about any of these artists if they’d put out an AI-written album from scratch. Nobody wants to hear that. There needs to be a root.

And when you lose that, I think you’re right, brands will probably try to over-optimize too quickly. And that can be dangerous. In the effort to over-optimize, they’ll start to staff down too, expecting more from fewer people.

There could be scenarios where brands over-rely on AI and actually lose their mission.

Ryan

Totally. It’s hard to quantify brand integrity, but it’s of the utmost importance. And it’s up to us to continue its curation, to ensure its longevity.

Chris

Exactly. And just one last point on that: B2B is all about trust. Every brand is about trust, because it represents expectations. But the difference between B2C and B2B is this:

In B2C, you’re spending money.In B2B, you’re asking someone to spend their reputation.

So brands have to be cognizant that authenticity can’t be artificial or synthetic if they want to build trust. And I think that trust begins with the brand’s authenticity.

Ryan

I love that. Well said. We’re nearing the end of the episode, and we started by talking about vulnerability, how it often takes a pretty steadfast push for people to be willing to accept it.

I’d like to hear from both of you, words of encouragement for those who’ve thought about vulnerability on a personal level or a brand level, and who are asking, “We should be this... but can we be this?”

Chris, what would you say to those people considering it?

Chris

I’d say go for it. You have to. If you don’t, you’re just wearing a uniform, doing nothing to set yourself apart or differentiate yourself.

People trust people who are, as we’ve said, vulnerable and authentic. So while we can convey confidence, we have to take that next step toward understanding each other. And the same goes for any brand or marketing program.

Ryan

Michael, words of encouragement for those considering vulnerability as a superpower, perhaps?

Michael

Yeah. I’ll hearken back to something you said earlier: The job of marketing is to start the conversation. And vulnerability is a conversation starter. It’s a way to get people to understand who you are, whether you’re a solo founder telling your own story, or a large brand leaning into known frictions within your industry. It makes people talk.

So if the job of marketing is to start conversations… why wouldn’t we be leaning into it more?

Ryan

I love it. Gentlemen, heck of a conversation today.

We love what you brought to the conversation, Chris, 28 years of experience, and there’s a lot of sage wisdom in that. I think our listeners and viewers will feel that too. For those who want to learn more about Chris or SCHERMER as a whole, where can we point them?

Chris You can find us at schermer.co. That’s S-H-E-R-M-E-R dot co.

Ryan

Excellent. Michael and I want to thank you for your time today, your consideration, and your well-thought expertise. Chris, thank you so much.

Chris

Appreciate it.

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