Yes Folks, You Can Start Your Ad Agency – And Succeed
Great article in the U.K.’s The Drum from London Advertising’s CEO Michael Moszyinski on what might just happen if you bailed from your ad agency and decided to go out on your own. Sure, it’s scary. Sure, you might not succeed. Sure you are putting your career on the line. Sure you’ll miss the other hundred’s of people you drink with at Ogilvy or Droga5 or 72andsunny.
But, you know you want to do it. You know that you can do a better job than the management of your current agency. You know that you have super special smart ideas that you’d like to share with high-profit clients. You know that your time may be running out. You know that you might even be able to steal one of your clients.
“Confessions of an indie agency start up: Seven years in”
Take a good read of Michael’s agency launch story on The Drum. It will be enlightening, repeat enlightening, and should get your entrepreneurial juices flowing. Here is a brief energizer from London’s history for you to get you packing up…
Our mission statement for our new agency was “to deliver London-quality creative in any media, in any language, anywhere in the world”. (Since then from our one office in London with 12 people we have created ads that have run in more countries than WPP with 179,000 staff has offices in.)
When I started to write the business plan I needed to put something on the front page. I wrote one word “London”. When I showed the plan to Alan he looked at the front page, raised his eyebrow, and turned it over. It was the first and only time that Alan has ever approved a creative idea that I have had. But in his inimitable style Alan guided every other aspect of the genesis of our brand with the same brilliance he applies to our clients.
It so happened that the URL www.LondonAdvertising.com was available and so our new agency was born. When we informed our lawyers they said “you can’t possibly call your agency LONDON” to which we replied “perfect “.
Go to London Advertising’s website and see how an agency delivers their pitch. Smart, strategic, simple. Not an overly WordPressed site designed by your website designers. This is a website designed to tell a great story, deliver a smart pitch and sell the agency. Yes, a simple but powerful website that sells. And, it seems to work. This agency is on a major roll.
London Advertising?
Yes, as you see above, they named their agency London. Not just cause it sounds cool and because the URL was surprisingly available. They named their agency London because it supports their key proposition: “to deliver London-quality creative in any media, in any language, anywhere in the world”. London (as in the city and, of course, the agency) simply makes the best advertising in the world. I know it because I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi London with Michael and was blown away by the strategic and creative brilliance when I arrived years ago from our mega-New York office.
London Advertising figured out how to harness the power of LONDON.
So, go find something powerful to harness, damn your fears and then get out of your current agency. While you still have the time to do it.
Last, totally self-serving point
If you are going to build and launch a new agency, please have a business and marketing plan. Here are a bunch of posts that I’ve written on how to get the new business that will fill your new agency’s coffers.
Need a bit more British stimulation?
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