Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Ad Agency CEO

Advertising Agency New Business Conference + Bourbon

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Fuel Lines Advertising Agency New Business Conference: October 8-9

postcard-frontOctober is soooo boring. NOT. Here is something to do that will help you grow your advertising agency’s client list.

Fuel Lines New Business Conference will be held in Nashville, TN on October 8-9. The Tennessee part is where the bourbon comes into play. But, that isn’t the reason you should attend. Here are a couple of other really good reasons. These are not necessarily in order of importance:

  • I am a keynote speaker and I’d love to meet you in Nashville.
  • Another great keynote speaker is the famous (infamous?) ‘Ad Contrarian’ author and blogger Bob Hoffman. Bob is one of the folks that added his humorous but oh so spot on insights to my book, “The Levitan Pitch.” 
  • You will get to see the smart Michael Gass of Fuel Lines and the well-read Jami Oetting of Hubspot’s Agency Post. Plus.
  • You will spend a couple of days focussing on advertising agency new business to hear what works and to interact with other agency leaders to hone your agency’s new business program.
  • Nashville is sweet in October.

Sign Up –> Right Here

The Conference

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I Bet You Can’t Read or Write (Code)

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Sorry, You Can’t Read Or Write

FT-150611-Ford.png.CROP.promovar-mediumlargeI can’t and neither can you (most likely).

Here’s the drill. Virtually everything you do or rely on these days is controlled by computer code. You phone, your car, your house, your relationships, your business, your leisure time, even the blueberries you buy in summer.

Oh, and, yes, all of the advertising and marketing you do for your clients.

So, when I say you can’t read or write I mean…

You Don’t Know What Code Is (And, Of Course, You Can’t Write It)

Look, I get it. My companies published early stage websites in the 1990’s = New Jersey Online (for Advance Publications) and websites for Microsoft and Nabisco (ala Journal Square Interactive). I was also the founder and CEO of ActiveBuddy which did natural language years ahead of Apple’s Siri and my agency dove head first into all things digital.

BUT… I am code  illiterate and it held me back.  [Read more…] about I Bet You Can’t Read or Write (Code)

Gary Vaynerchuk: Old School Advertising Agency CEO

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Gary Vaynerchuk: Old School Advertising Agency CEO

VaynerMediaWhat does ‘old school’ mean? Well, one of the things is having a personality and being able to express it in such a powerful and interesting and enrgetic way that prospective clients just have to….

…Make The “I want you” Call

This agency video (actually a Digiday interview) makes me want to call up and give VaynerMedia some business. Does your agency video act as a brand-building business development tool? Do you want to be famous? Gary has always wanted to be famous and this obvious goal delivers big time for his agency’s growth. Watch and steal some of the energy.

 

Ad Agency People: Get The Hell Out Of Town

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getoutCan Ad Agency People Get The Hell Out Of Town?

I’ve been thinking about living and working in a foreign country. I am not alone. It might be a life stage for me (I sold my ad agency a couple of years ago and do not have to live in any specific locale — although I do live in Portland, America’s coolest city.) I also run a ‘nomad’ consulting business and was able to base  my work out of three continents in the past couple of years.

Sell Your Ad Agency & Get Out

A few times a year I talk with ad agency owners that want to get the hell out. They want to do this for various reasons: They’ve had enough; they are 61; they want to try something else; their agency is not performing well; agency margins suck; there are too many competitors; they don’t like dealing with HR issues and paying for everyone’s medical insurance. And, on and on.

Nomad List — The Best Places to Live and Work RemotelyMove To Mexico Or Chaing Mai

My wife and I started to scout out Mexico last year. We spent some time in Mexico City, San Miguel de Allende and Ajijic. San Miguel was the winner… Here is Huffington Post’s take on San Miguel: “10 Reasons Why People Fall in Love With San Miguel de Allende.”  We’ll do more scouting this winter when we vacation in Sayulita and Puerto Vallarta. We’ve selected Mexico for a bunch of reasons. It is Mexico and if you dig Mexico like we do then it is a no-brainer. Mexico is also: close to friends and family via many non-stops; has a sweet cost of living; is in our time zones (which works for my American agency clients); has a very rich and diverse culture; has mountains and beaches and big cosmopolitan cities; has great food; has warmth (on many levels); has a rich art scene and is community oriented. However, it has spotty Internet service which I realized when I was working out of an AirBNB rental in San Miguel de Allende. I got over this issue quickly via evening shots of tequila and mezcal. Two other big reasons to dig Mexico.

Nomad List

I was surfing the Internet this morning in my never ending quest to learn about places where I can live and work and came across Nomad List. Nomad List is an information website and community for nomads. Nomads like 30, 40, 50 and 60-year-olds that might not want to work anymore on Madison Avenue or in SOMA or Austin.

The site lets you put in your criteria as in COL, weather, air quality, activities and Internet speeds. Check it out and realize that you can actually work from anywhere in the world. Nomad List also points you to co-working spaces. Most ad people have portable skills…. why not move them overseas.

Need a start? I punched in some personal criteria and Chaing Mai, Thailand came out on top. It has been on my move-to list for years. Play with Nomad and find out why.

So, get out.

Need more push? Check out this article… “Succeeding from Anywhere: 5 Trailblazing Communities for Digital Nomads”

How To Create Nice Ad Agency Clients

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lion-taming-1-622x415My first client was General Mills (Total cereal and Yoplait). GM had been a client of my agency Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (the largest agency in New York at the time) for over thirty years and the relationship was deep and sweet. It was based on mutual respect and the goal of producing great creative to drive sales. It was a fabulous starter client, but I soon realized that all of the clients that I would work for in the next 25+ years were not going to be as professional. Most were, but not all.

My old agency Citrus once had a very profitable casino client who’s marketing director was soooo stressed out and f&cking mean that she had made an AE cry. After determining that this was not a win-win situation, we fired the client. A few years later we readmitted her and the casino to our account list. Time had passed and they needed our expertise and frankly, we liked their budgets. We also hired a brilliant ‘lion-tamer’ AE that actually wound up building a great relationship.

Then the client left and an even more major asshole became the marketing director. (What’s up with casino clients? I’ve heard casino client horror stories before.) The President of the casino thought that this guy ‘got it’ as he had run the floor of a major Las Vegas casino. Guess what… he didn’t have a clue and he was very insecure.

Things got so bad before we again parted ways, that I wrote the following white paper to:

1) Tell my clients that nice, professional clients actually get more time, personal attention and hard work from their agencies;

2) That being nice and decent and professional is a good thing and,

3) I had to blow off steam — nicely. I figured, why not turn this problem into a learning experience. Here’s the 2009 white paper based on my best ad agency client relationships during my 16 years at Saatchi & Saatchi and owning my own agency. Why not share it with your clients? Subtly.

“I Heart My Ad Agency. Or, How To Create Nice Clients.”

Building a Strong client-agency relationship for Better Work— and Better results. Lets start with a good quote.

“There are no bad advertising agencies, only bad agency-client relationships.”

Kenneth G. Romanzi, Domestic Chief Operating Officer, Ocean Spray Cranberries [Read more…] about How To Create Nice Ad Agency Clients