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Search Results for: bots

Is Your Advertising Agency Ignoring Chatbots?

Peter · November 23, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Is Your Advertising Agency Watching The Chatbot Space?

I’ve written about the potential of chatbots as an advertising agency revenue and new business source. Read about it here on HubSpot and here on my blog.

Facebook + Microsoft + Google = Pay Attention

If you have any reason to think that chatbots are NOT going to be a major part of the digital world & your marketing, listen to the leaders of Facebook, Microsoft and Google on what they are up to.

 

Chatbots and Your Advertising Agency

Peter · November 18, 2016 · 1 Comment

Chatbots, Bots, Guest Posting and Your Advertising Agency

screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-11-05-24-amCheck out my article Why Bots Are the Next Big Frontier for Agencies that was posted this morning on HubSpot’s marketing blog. The article discusses my views on the power of Chatbots, the looming opportunity for advertising agencies to get on this bandwagon and my personal experience running ActiveBuddy, an early Chatbot company.

3 Takeaways

My article offers three big takeaways (I mean immediately actionable takeaways) for your ad agency and its new business program:

  1. Something new for you to talk about. Pay attention to AI and Chatbots. Savvy advertising agencies will jump on this bandwagon. It is real. Why? People like to talk to smart, friendly, uber programmed computers rather than tap out on the keyboard and phone. Oh, and Facebook loves chatbots.
  2. Your skill. Advertising agencies are good at writing or should be. Creating smart Chatbots is all about understanding human communications and writing scripts that recognize how interpersonal communications work. This is what a savvy advertising agency is good at. That savvy agency is also good at building brand to consumer conversations. Believe me, you’ve spent almost 10 years building static apps. Chatbots will unleash your inner conversational bot expertise. This is already in-house.
  3. Reach. I’m sure that you love your agency blog. But, guest posting on a mega website like HubSpot will drive way more incremental reach for your thought leadership, ideas and brand awareness. Why? Alexa tells me that HubSpot is the 529th highest ranked website. Get this, Ogilvy’s website is ranked at only 41,659 — after zillions of years of being in the ad business. Even a smart one at Ogilvy should think about guest posting if she’d like to reach more folks.

On the subject of reach… after only a couple of hours, my post was shared lots. See….

screen-shot-2016-11-18-at-10-54-01-amLast point. Here is the video ActiveBuddy made 14 years ago to launch our company. You’ll see that I thought bots were a big fucking idea then. I still do.

 

An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

Peter · May 22, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Optimized Search Engine Blog StrategyI started blogging in the early 2000s. I really cranked it up after I sold my advertising agency and became an advertising agency business development consultant. Below is a list of my blog posts. The subject matter of these hundreds of blog posts reflects my dedication to having an optimized search engine blog strategy. It worked.

My Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy.

I am going to keep this easy. I could ramble on but these are the core elements of my blog strategy.

  • Understand your objectives. Mine is to entice advertising agency leadership to contact me about helping them develop an unignorable business development program. This has worked for me every week.
  • Understand and meet the needs of your market. You are writing for them. Example: My evergreen list that is just for advertising execs… Top Advertising and Design Awards.
  • Use all available SEO tools to help you determine trending subject matter and keywords. There are a bunch of tools listed on my advertising agency resources list.
  • Study your direct competition. What are they writing about? What are their best keywords?
  • Be consistent. As you can see, I have written, on average, over one post per week. In 2013 alone (when I wanted to really drive Google love), I wrote 188 blog posts.
  • Have your very own voice. Write with gusto,
  • Amplify the reach/frequency of your blog posts: post em on LinkedIn; use them in your agency’s email newsletter; send them directly to clients and prospects (even try paper), and on…
  • Go mega amplification. I am going to use some of these very best Levitan blog posts to form the basis of my new book.

OK – Here You Go… Levitan’s 750 Plus Blog Post Archive

[Read more…] about An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

The Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

Peter · January 21, 2022 · Leave a Comment

How To Run A Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

advertising agency pitchAvi Dan followed me as the guy running Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide’s business development program (and, I think did a better job than me as by the end of my tenure all I could think about was the growing Internet space). Avi just wrote the following article on LinkedIn about the subject of the good, bad, and ugly advertising agency pitch. I thought that I’d respond a bit to his thinking because I wrote the New York Times best-selling book on how to run the world’s most powerful, new business-delivering ad agency pitch.

From Avi’s bio… “Avi Dan is a columnist for Forbes, a former CEO and board member of 3 major agencies, and a highly regarded agency pitch consultant. By his own estimate, he has been involved in over 200 pitches in the past 30 years.”

From Avi…

Q&A With A Pitch Consultant: “Don’t Hire The Agency That Inspires You, Hire The Agency That Is Inspired BY YOU”

In 2019, the year right before Covid, a Morgan Stanley analyst had reported that a record $35 Billion of advertising spending was up for review. That was almost more money hanging in the balance than the amount under review during the previous two years, combined. With the economy picking up now, advertisers are, once again, rethinking their agency relationships. Ad Age had recently reported that one-third of all advertisers stated that, they plan to put their business into a pitch.

Peter: One-third? Crazy. This really can only mean one of two things. Either advertising agencies are doing a shit job or clients have no clue what they really want from their agency. A smart client should be able to get smart thinking and service out of their own — current — agency. I have been an agency owner and a client. Good clients know how to manage their agencies. Well, most. It is absurd that one-third should think they have a failing relationship. Too high.

Q: Why do you think there are so many reviews lately?

A: If those numbers tell you anything, it’s that, advertisers aren’t happy with their agencies, even the good ones. For example, Wieden had lost KFC and Droga5 had recently lost IHOP. Marketing is much more complex these days, and very few agencies are capable of evolving fast enough to keep up with the needs of their client. What’s surprising isn’t that so much is in review, but, that it didn’t happen sooner.

Peter: Avi says… “very few agencies are capable of evolving fast enough.” OK, possibly true for many. But not Droga5 and Wieden. These best-of-class agencies are just too good, big and well-managed. So, I’ll point to clients as a failure point. By the way, how can anyone be expected to dramatically increase pancake and waffle sales during a pandemic?

Q: How are pitches different now?

A: The briefs for pitches that we see coming through to us now, are more transformational. Clients are deep into the digital transformation, and so is the consumer and the media. Technology, cloud services, eCommerce, data, and virtual CX are becoming critical issues for the enterprise.

Peter: The marketing world has been way about the idea of digital transformational since I left Saatchi in 1995 to put major newspapers online (and invent website advertising – yes, I did that) or in 2000 when my company Activebuddy invented interactive chatbots including SmarterChild and commercial bots for clients like Radiohead. Is Avi saying that the zillions of agency people that live and breath digital do not understand transformation? Could they be worse at it than a marketing director at IHOP? Side note. I have been a consultant in a few advertising agency pitches lately and every agency talks transformation or related subjects. How could they not?

Q: You are very critical of the pitch process. Why? [Read more…] about The Perfect Advertising Agency Pitch

The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving

Peter · October 28, 2021 · 4 Comments

Yes, Ad Agency Christmas Giving Is Ineffectual – A Nice Thought From Peter. Ja?

OK. It’s 2021 and what a wonderful two years it has been. As we step outside we, that’s you ad agency leaders, are thinking… huh, shouldn’t we do something cool for our clients? Like, deliver a bit of ad agency Christmas giving. But, um, no, do not do that. So in honor of my magical anti-gifting thought and advice, I offer MY annual Christmas rant (or better yet, a strategic approach to giving).

It is that time of year again.

It is the time that many an ad agency decides that it is a great time of year to add to the upcoming ad agency Christmas giving clutter. Am I being Grinch-like? You bet.

Does your ad agency send out Christmas cards or gifts or online trinkets to clients — even prospects? I call this practice stupid silly. Strong words? Sure. but, why am I saying this?

Look, I have nothing against season’s greetings. But, after working at a couple of agencies (including my own) and watching dozens/hundreds of agencies send out very “creative” Christmas (Chanukah, Kwanza, etc.) cards and gifts during the late-December season, I have to say this is very ill-timed even highly-inefficient outreach. It is wasteful in three critical ways: [Read more…] about The Idiocy Of Ad Agency Christmas Giving

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