How VaynerMedia Is Helping Mint Mobile Take Media In-House and Grow Its Team

Mint Mobile is pulling a bulk of its media investment from the performance-savvy VaynerMedia (VM) in a move to build an in-house media practice capable of handling lower-funnel marketing. Ryan Reynolds' cellular company partnered up with Gary Vaynerchuk's media agency three years ago, but the two partners understood they could amicably breakup long before they did. Before the pandemic struck, Mint Mobile's leadership team sat down with Gary Vaynerchuk at the Consumer Electronics Show to talk about VM's budding relationship with Mint. At the time, Vaynerchuk said something most agency leaders don't. "He's like, 'We want to be your partner, and we want you to eventually leave us. Right? Like, we want to help you scale so you can do this on your own,'" recalled Mint CMO, Aron North. When Mint formally tapped VM to manage its business in April 2019. It hadn't achieved enough scale to take expansive media investments in house. It had formed its full-service creative agency, Full Bars, but managing media in-house is notoriously more difficult. Now that Mint's achieved enough scale to do it effectively, it's staffing up a fledgling in-house media group that will sit within its direct-to-consumer (DTC) practice. The cellular company will take back direct ownership of its investments in search, digital paid media, paid social and programmatic advertising—a transition that won't happen all at once because Mint's contract with Vayner for programmatic and analytics is not up until March 2023. Even after that, Mint will keep VM on its roster to handle multi-touch attribution and marketing mix modeling. A year in the making Where there are often hard feelings when accounts switch hands during reviews, brands that break up with their agencies to expand in-house prowess can make the process more amicable by telling the agency far in advance. Understanding North's plans a year ahead of time helped keep both agency and brand happy partners. Last summer, North let the managing director of VaynerMedia's LA office, Lisa Buckley, know that the move in-house was on the horizon. North had scaled Mint's marketing department over the years, doubling headcount in 2019, growing by 50% in 2020, and doubling headcount again in 2021 to reach 102 today. Abbie Wright, who led Mint's agency pitch process that VM eventually won, now sits at the helm of the in-house media group. North told Buckley that he didn't want to pull investments out right away, which gave VM time to support its client during what Buckley called a "10-month phased approach" that includes Mint's team shadowing VM. As with any relationship between agency and client, the two had a master service agreement and scope of work. Despite certain parameters being locked in place, VM adjusted the scope as needed during the transition, and will continue to do this post transition as Mint hires more employees. According to North, having planned flexibility helps Mints since the labor market is currently tight. "Our narrative is like, if you want to work with us for a year and then build it in house, don't not tell us," Vaynerchuk told Adweek. The CEO's tact is to create as little friction as possible for his clients, regardless of their objectives. "You don't even have to work with us in the first place," he added, noting that VM's consulting practice offers help to brands that want to build an in-house operation. Growing brands can also come to VM for recommendations on who to staff the in-house agencies with. The CEO wants to recommend Vayner-trained talent for in-house opportunities he becomes aware of. He aims to "try to place them. Out of karma," he said. In the next 36 to 48 months, Vaynerchuk will shift 10% of his focus to supporting clients' in-housing aspirations, up from 5% right now. Despite his willingness to help, he believes in-house operations will unwind sooner rather than later, in the wake of an impending recession, and that he'll be there for those brands when they do."Even the most famous examples of in-housing are going to get unraveled if they're publicly-traded companies, because Wall Street doesn't want that overhead on their P&L," Vaynerchuk told Adweek. "I actually think what's going to end up being in-house is the above-the-line work, not the digital social work," he added. Existing data do indicate that fewer companies take media in-house. At this point, 77% of companies have an in-house agency, according to IHAF’s 2021 Productivity and the Pandemic report, fielded in partnership with Forrester Research. The same study shows that while 92% of survey responses said their in-house agency provided design or art direction, just 34% said it provided media buying services. It remains to be seen how the tide will shift as more brands figure out how to successfully run digital media in house, at scale. To do it right, Buckley recommends brands involve their agencies in the planning process. "When I see it being done relatively well, I think is when it is a phased approach," she said. The elusive lower funnel The nascent media group will be fully integrated with Mint's DTC practice. While Best Buy and Target sell Mint, its DTC business is its fastest growing, and North doesn't think that will change. The bottom of the funnel, according to North, is the most critical point on the purchase path. He's betting that Mint will realize greater efficiency by owning that piece of the journey. Because the media group sits beneath the DTC practice, North doesn't have any plans to brand it or officially turn it into an in-house agency. "Living in 'the matrix' and seeing the data every day, you start to unearth new insights or new tests you want to run. I hope this unlocks new types of thinking that can lead to new experiments and growth," North added in an email. Currently, Mint relies on VM's expertise in the social space and its pension for experimentation across channels to find out what channels work best. North aims to attract former employees of Google and Facebook to retain expertise in the two platforms, where Mint concentrates most of its ad spend. Attracting that caliber of talent is challenging for most brands, but Reynolds' celebrity is a sweetener for talent that want to work with a big name. It's still early stages, but North aims for the media practice to scale slowly, with just three to six new hires in the near future. Vaynerchuk himself understands why bringing bottom-funnel media in house makes sense for a DTC company. "As a DTC company, media and creative should be together. Whether you do that in-house, or you do that with people that are best in class at their craft like us, that's what you should do," he said. Mint Mobile’s Aron North on Why Creative Is Jet Fuel To the Engine