Ad Agency CEO

Free Ten Point Advertising Agency Assessment

Peter · August 20, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Here Is Freebie Just For You: My Ten Point Advertising Agency Assessment

How is your advertising, digital, social media, PR agency doing? When I owned my Portland advertising & digital agency it was hard for me to tell how I stacked up vs. other agencies. As my friend Jon of Portland’s The Good, a conversion rate optimization consultancy, said on our recent podcast interview,

“It is hard to read the label from inside the jar.”

So, to help you, I am offering, for a limited time (true) a ten point advertising agency assessment. FYI, when I owned my own agency, I took all of the advice I could get. Even when I ran business development at Saatchi & Saatchi, I wanted third-party opinions and advice.

So, Why Offer An Advertising Agency Assessment – For Free?

If you work at an agency or in marketing, you know that making a high-value offer is usually a productive lead generation marketing tool. As part of my own marketing (side note, I practice what I preach) I am running a google PPC campaign that targets advertising agency leadership. Here is my ad agency leader offer landing page (it should at least be instructive as a look as my marketing). As I have often pointed out… this is a Corleone offer. It should not be refused. If you run an agency, go for it.

The offer is driving some incoming interest for my services at a time that many advertising agencies should be reevaluating their agency business and marketing plans. Right?

Levitan’s Ten Point Advertising Agency Assessment & Check-Up

This advertising agency assessment is based on my forever years of experience running major accounts and business development at Saatchi & Saatchi; CEO of two Internet start-ups; my own advertising agency and this business development consultancy. I have worked with dozens of agencies. I have seen what they look like from outside the jar.

Here are the ten points I will assess just for you:

Your business plan: How hard do you look at and possibly adjust your business plan? How will you generate maximum revenues and profits in our strange 2020? Do you make adjustments? Do you understand your Total Addressable Market (TAM)?
Your advertising agency positioning: This is a tough and hard look at your primary brand proposition. You can read about my general perspective on the value of a kick-ass positioning on this website.
Your 8-second website: This is probably one of the first ways that anyone sees your agency. How do your ranks vs. your competition? What do you say that will get me to pay attention in my 8-second look-see. In many cases, you only have around eight seconds to make me look at you and stick around vs. the other 3,999 advertising, digital, etc. agency websites that are screaming for attention. Here is my blog post about the Best Advertising Agency Websites.
Your business development plan and activity: How have you managed your plan over the past year? My whole blog of close to 800 blog posts discusses how you should market your agency.
Your outbound, account-based marketing: I’ll just ask you… you do this right? If, so, how?
Your social media activity and authority: Are you an active blogger, thought leader, podcaster? How do you look on LinkedIn; Twitter; YouTube; Instagram; and ae you a category leader? What do your stats tell you?
Your client list: How does your client list look to an outsider? Do one or two clients account for too high a percentage of your revenues? Do you know how to position your client list for business development?
Your intellectual property: Do you have any IP? Something that will differentiate and add sustainable value to your agency? You can do this. I know how to make this happen – efficiently.
Your ‘findable’ quotient: Can I find your advertising agency if I do a search for you? You should be everywhere I might search for you (your competition will probably be there)Yes, I have written about this.
Your creative vibe: Yes, clients have brought their marketing inhouse. It is easy. For example, just get some social media type folks to do the work. But, but, most inhouse client resources suck at being creative thinkers and doers. How does your creativity stack up and how do you prove it?

That’s It, Folks

If you need my educated third-party, very honest, no bull shit assessment… go for it. This is a limited time offer. Give me a shout.

OK, One More. Have you listened to the smart and entertaining Advertising Stories podcast?

Does Your Advertising Agency Advertise Itself?

Peter · July 6, 2020 · Leave a Comment

An Advertising Agency Launches An Advertising Campaign – For Itself. Weirdly Wonderful.

I council my advertising agency clients to advertise. I mean, actually use on and offline advertising to advertise the agency to increase awareness within the marketing universe, own their own story, and drive incoming leads.

Oh, and be UNIGNORABLE. A weirdly wonderful thing to do.

Today, LONDON Advertising, an uber-cool, massively award-winning and strategic major league agency, has done just that. These guys are ballsy and not your mother’s advertising agency.

The ad I am highlighting says, “How many advertising agencies can you name? Well, now you can name one more.”

A bit more about LONDON – note how focussed their positioning is:

LONDON Advertising is a global agency with just one office. It was set up in 2008 (two weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers) to disrupt the traditional network agency model. Since then it has worked with clients based on every continent and run campaigns in more countries than WPP has offices. The agency’s iconic “I’m a fan” campaign for Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental has proven to achieve the highest ad recall ever recorded by Ipsos Mori.

LONDON Advertising has been voted Agency of the Year for six out of the last seven years.

The Advertising Deal.

Agencies have historically told their clients to advertise into the headwinds of a recession. Reasons include hold your share or voice; increase your share of voice; be one of the winners while your competitors hunker down; make sure your brands don’t die a slow death. You get this picture. Well here is an agency putting their money where their mouth is. A rarity even in the good days.

I am going to let the LONDON Advertising press release speak for itself.

Ad Agency launches major campaign day after lockdown for a highly unusual client – itself

Ad agencies often tell their clients, brands that advertise in a downturn increase market share.

However, few agencies take their own advice.

LONDON Advertising is taking its own advice and is today launching a major campaign with
10 TV ads, starring Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson, on 9,000 spots on Sky News.

The TV is supported by super-premium digital posters across Ocean Outdoor’s UK portfolio and Linked-in. The campaign is running from 6^th July to 2^nd August and will reach 30 million people.

Michael Moszynski, Founder and CEO, said:

“Our campaign, launching on the first working day after the easing of Lockdown, is a call to arms to all businesses to get Britain going again. We believe in ‘by example shalt thou lead’ and that we all have a duty to help rebuild our economy.”

‘Advertising Legend’ Rupert Howell (Founder HHCL, MD ITV) commented:

“This is the first time I have seen an ad agency do a major campaign like this for itself.
The ads are bloody brilliant!”.

The agency’s Founder and Creative Director, Alan Jarvie, explains the rationale:

“It is a fact advertising builds brands and fame. We believe the current situation provides a rare opportunity. Audiences are currently higher than normal and media is cheaper, as many companies have cancelled their campaigns. So, we’re doing what we would advise our clients to do; advertise now.

Our campaign demonstrates the three criteria we believe work must satisfy to be effective: Is it simple? Does it stand out? Can you remember who it’s for? A lot of advertising fails to do one, two or all three of these things.

We also wanted to show it’s the size of your idea that matters, not the size of your production budget. We would like to thank Dame Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson, OBE, for making themselves available to take part in the campaign.”

Here Is The Advertising.

Videos of all 10 TV ads featuring Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson can be downloaded here

Hi-res image of the poster ads can be downloaded here

If you are a serious client… contact: michael@LONDONadvertising.com +44 7968 063 155

If You Are An Advertising Agency That Wants To Grow Its Client List… Contact Me.

Is Your Advertising Agency Business Development Director Doomed?

Peter · June 29, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Yes, Your Advertising Agency Business Development Director Might Be Doomed. A 2020 Update.

The interview below was done in 2014. It remains 100% right on.

Some updated thinking. I am asked on a high-frequency basis by agency management, that means CEO types, if their advertising agency should have a business development director. Because of this question, I thought I’d update this evergreen interview with Brooks Gilley who knows what’s up.

My current thinking based on talking with many agencies is that, at best, only 50% of advertising agency business development directors succeed. I am about to do some haranguing. Why?

As is pointed out below, most advertising agencies have a low to a non-competitive brand position. The degree of positioning sameness – “we are a digital agency” or “we are creative thinkers” – and messaging sameness – as in no soul or a distinctive opinion or having the goal of being unignorable – is crazy. How could even a competent business director sell the 50% of agencies that cannot define a strong sales proposition? Or not have a well-considered target market?
A huge chunk of agencies (it has been reported that up to 75% of agencies) do not have a master business development plan, think of it as a sales plan. How is this possible? And, worse, who is supposed to write the plan? I do not think that a business development director alone can write this plan. It should be an agency self-preservation and growth project.
Many advertising agency leaders have little experience in writing a sales manager compensation plan. Here is a compensation plan you can use.
Too many agency leaders hand off the role of business development to the director. I owned my own agency and I devoted at least half of my time to business development. And, I provided daily support and thinking and budget.

Give me a shout if you want to discuss your agency and its specifics.

Back To The Interview About The Doomed Business Development Director.

To quote the Beach Boys… Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have a business development director that brought in more business for your advertising agency than you can handle? But is your business development director doomed from the start?

She or he could be if you do not have agency objectives, a competitive agency brand positioning, something to sell beyond, “Hey we are a full-service/digital/social media agency”. Or, not having a list of clients and categories you want to nail; an active up-to-date CRM system or you are now in a state of panic because you just lost your largest client.

I know that this is a tough job to fill and do. I managed my agency’s business development director at my own ad agency; for Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in New York and London and as CEO at two Internet start-ups. I have hired ten business development directors over the past twenty years. Some worked out and some, well, not so well. Again, this is one of, if not the toughest, agency jobs to position for success.

But, don’t take my word for it. Before you read on for an expert interview, you might also want to go to my blog post on how to pay an agency business development director.

An Expert Interview With Brooks Gilley On How To Hire A Business Development Director.

Brooks Gilley is the Founder and CEO of Portland’s 52 Limited. 52 LTD is a 15-year-old creative resource company that connects world-class talent with leading brands, marketing departments, design firms, advertising and digital agencies.

In addition to running one of the west coast’s leading creative talent agencies, Brooks ran the Portland Advertising Federation and worked at advertising agencies.

Peter: According to the RSW/US 2014 RSW/US Agency-Marketer Business Report, the tenure of agency business development directors was two years or less. ADWEEK reports that people in this position at large agencies last less than one year. Is this surprising to you?

Brooks: It’s not surprising at all, largely for the fact that agencies I have worked with on business development director searches come to us in a moment of panic, and that’s usually where the ask starts. It’s a role that is needed now but was probably needed at least twelve months before new business gains became an issue. Additionally, it’s not necessarily a strategic role that is esteemed at and supported within a ‘creative’ organization. [Read more…] about Is Your Advertising Agency Business Development Director Doomed?

How To Sell Your Advertising Agency

Peter · June 18, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Hmm, so, you want to know how to sell your advertising agency. Or, maybe buy one.

Selling isn’t, of course, a unique thought, especially these days. Here is some background and learning from the why and how I sold my advertising agency – Citrus. I had a plan and it worked.

A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Jake Jorgovan on his Working Without Pants podcast about selling an advertising agency. You can listen to Selling Your Advertising Agency here. I thought that I was particularly smart that day. And open about why and how I sold my own advertising agency. Note, I have bought and sold three agencies and have counseled a few agencies about how they should do the same.

… Oh, Quickie update. My new 58-page ebook on how to sell your advertising agency is coming out in August. its a freebie. Email me if you want to know when it hits.

Go: How To Sell Your Advertising Agency.

First, a bit of my background so you know where I was coming from. Literally.

Jake

Peter, for anyone in the audience who doesn’t know who you are and what it is that you do, can you just give us a quick overview about who you are and your background?

Peter

Sure. Today I am a business development consultant for advertising agencies. That’s today.

I started life as a commercial advertising and editorial photographer in San Francisco, woke up one day and said, “I really don’t want to take photographs for other people.” I moved back to my hometown New York, started working at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, which was a very large Mad Men-type agency. Our client list was bizarre, everything from General Mills to Proctor & Gamble, to Toyota and Nabisco. That agency was bought by Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide.

I spent 16 years at Dancer and Saatchi. I worked in New York. I opened and ran the office in Minneapolis. I moved to London and worked across Europe. I ran business development in London and New York. When I came back to New York in ’94 I discovered the internet and went to work for the company that owns Conde Nast putting newspapers online. Did that for a few years, started another company called Active Buddy, which is similar in some ways to Siri as in understanding natural language. The platform was instant messaging. We were going to sell the company to Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft. I would have had FU money. That didn’t happen, but I did get a good chunk when we sold the technology to Microsoft.

For some reason after the dot com bust, I woke up and said, “It’s time to move the family to Oregon,” and I bought an advertising agency out there called Ralston Group. We renamed it when we bought the design firm Citrus and added a couple of Nike AOR accounts. A few years later I woke up again and I said, “It’s time to sell the agency.” I could discuss the why and how’s in selling an agency if you want. I sold the agency. I now do three things in Mexico, one of which is to consult with advertising agencies around the world.

Why Did I Want To Sell My Agency?

Jake

Nice, that is an awesome and absolutely incredible story. And your headline on your website is very valid when I say, “I’m the most experienced advertising business development consultant.” As you clearly have got some years and track record in this and have done a ton of stuff with the big names. You’ve run your own agency. You’ve kind of been all around the field of things.

First of all, what was the why for you selling your agency? Why did you decide to do that versus continuing to run it like it is? Let’s start there because that a question I’m definitely curious about, and I know a lot of agency owners sometimes think about it.

Peter

Well, the why, I think it’s important to understand why you do anything. And at some point in the latter stages of owning the advertising agency, I ceased to have as much fun as I had had in the beginning. And a real catalyst for that was the 2007 – 2009 recession, which I think dramatically hurt the agency business in terms of profitability. Now let’s couple that with the growth of digital marketing where there are many, many new platforms to manage without commensurate billing, and I really lost a bit of love in the business when the business lost its level of profitability.

You have to remember that I started in the 15% commission days, and we were making bundles. I mean it was really a-go-go. There was a reason why there were mad men drinking wine and whiskey in their office and going out for long lunches and smoking cigarettes and cigars. And that really stopped in, let’s say the late 90s.

By 2009 I knew I had to reinvent my agency. I had done that a couple of times. I was going to reinvent it into a much smaller, much more hub, and spoke distributed agency staff model. And I just woke up one day and said, “You know, I just don’t want to do this again.”

How Did I Sell My Agency?

Sir Martin Sorrell And Ad Age

Peter · April 19, 2020 · 1 Comment

Sir Martin Sorrell And Ad Age On The Coronavirus Advertising Market

Yikes. So much to listen to and watch. A couple of days ago I watched an Ad Age interview by Senior Editor Jeanine Poggi and Sir Martin Sorrell. Sorrell was an early player at Saatchi & Saatchi, the founder of WPP and now runs S4 Capital. S4 is his new “agency” The strapline = “A Communications Business For The New Marketing Age”.

Need to hear from a smarter dude…. FAHGETABOUTIT.

Let’s start with a quote. Read on past this. But, start here. Do you ask clients to spend more during a “recession”? from Sir Martin:

Well listen, the traditional agency response is spend, spend, spend, you know?

They quote statistics. I think my former colleagues are quoting a statistic, 84% of consumers will be watching carefully or will appreciate those companies that behave well during… Well look, everybody’s going to behave well. Everybody right-mindedly will behave well. But it’s going to be a good thing to spend, spend, spend.

That’s nonsense.

The Ad Age interview is a 45-minute video and you can see it at the bottom. I had the key bits transcribed and include what I think are the important points from the perspective of an industry leader – in today’s ad market. Read on, especially about the critical to most agencies – question…

“What should you say to clients about their coronavirus advertising budget?”

Here you go. Note that I edited the interview for brevity and clarity.

Sir Martin Sorrell On The 2020 Market

Martin Sorrell:

Generally, it will be very difficult in Q2. I think we’ll see a recovery from lower levels in Q3, and then into Q4 it’ll get better. As we go into 2021 I think things will get better. There are things that will knock us off course, but I think generally…

On Digital

Martin Sorrell:

And S4 is a purely digital business. We’re totally focused on that holy trinity of first-party data, digital lab recognizing content, and programmatic, and we’re in the sweet spot.

I mean what we are seeing at the moment, even with the cuts in advertising budgets, shifts in money into digital.

And the digital platforms, the six big ones, Google, Facebook, Amazon, Tencent, Alibaba and TicTok, are in my view going to get stronger and stronger. They may have some problems around small businesses because that’s the part of the economy that’s going to be hardest hit by these in the liquidity issues. But once we get through Q2 and Q3, those platforms are going to be even stronger in the future, driven by data as well.

I mean, the first-party data is going to become more important, and third party cookies have been nixed or will be nixed over the next two years by Google.

On Advertising Spending Now – Do It? Or, Nonsense?

Jeanine Poggi:

And I have a question from Toby Jarvis on Facebook: How are you persuading your clients to continue advertising, especially since people are watching TV and online more than ever? And I want to add to that question, should advertisers keep advertising during this time? Should marketers still be advertising right now?

Martin Sorrell:

Well listen, the traditional agency response is spend, spend, spend, you know?

They quote statistics. I think my former colleagues are quoting a statistic, 84% of consumers will be watching carefully or will appreciate those companies that behave well during… Well look, everybody’s going to behave well. Everybody right-mindedly will behave well. But it’s going to be a good thing to spend, spend, spend.

That’s nonsense.

When companies are facing existential crises in Q2, when they are not sure that they will have enough money to survive, it’s ridiculous, and I would put it as strongly as that, to say “spend, spend, spend.” That’s nonsense.

It’s right to say that, for example, the tech companies who have budgets that were built around say sporting events around Tokyo 2020, or Euro 2020, or the Premier League… they should divert that spending to doing good to the purpose-driven campaigns.

On Altruistic Advertising

Martin Sorrell:

But those campaigns should be of highly practical altruistic purpose. They should be focused on equipment, on vaccine development, on therapy development, on supporting those on the front line in the NHS in the UK, or doctors or nurses, or whatever to be. It shouldn’t be self-serving.

And I think to suggest that spend, spend, spending is the answer, is really ridiculous. So the answer to this question, I think, is that you have to encourage clients to deploy their resources more effectively in the way that I outlined.

The tech companies up until now have held their budgets in our experience, some actually… Amazon hits a new high on the stock exchange, Netflix, it’s a new high. We are seeing budgets being expanded with those companies that have been positively affected. Obviously, travel and tourism would be the other end of the spectrum, but the tech companies have diverted money from those sporting events that I mentioned, for example, to doing good and purpose campaigns. We’re also starting to see some postponement, I think, by tech companies from half one into half two, because they count spend all that money, all those budgets, and they’re seeing some pressure on their own advertising revenues as the SMBs come under pressure. I think we’ll see that in the platform results as we get into them in Q2, as they report on Q1 and talk about Q2 and beyond. We’ll see the SMBs are being put under extreme pressure.

On What’s Next? TV? Nah.

Martin Sorrell:

So I think what we’re saying to clients is, “Understand that you may have to cut. But, move money into digital because that’s more effective.”

I think we’re seeing a heavy increase in streaming, not just at Netflix, but at the competitors like a Disney+, you see the Disney+ subscription figures, which are huge. Must be one of the most successful new product launches for a long period of time.

All these streaming devices will put pressure on linear TV, along with the switch to digital. And I think that’s the… Not used to be the $64,000 question, as to what is going to happen to linear TV. I think we see continued compression there, and not quite as high.

I remember I did a session at CES with Bill Konigsberg of Horizon, who runs the most successful independent media agency in America. It’s number three in the market after Publicist and Omnicom.

I remember him saying at CES that he thought some of the dayparts would be down by 45%, and that was before C-19.

I think there will be continued pressure on linear TV, and again, is it going to be as bad as what happened to newspapers and magazines? No. It will be better than that, but I think there will be continued pressure of some significant degree.

On The Big Digital Shift

Martin Sorrell:

So there is this change that we’re seeing, and just to amplify a little bit, as we come out of this, as we come into Q4 and 2021, three things are going to happen.

Consumers are going to switch even faster to digital.

They will learn to educate their kids, buy online, communicate with one another on social on video, whatever it happens to be, during C-19.

And we’re going to see media owners switch to digital even faster as well.

The Ad Age Interview

Got 45 minutes? Here you go. Oh, LOL, tell me what the “Maltese Falcon” looking thing is on Sorrel’s left.

So, what are you telling your clients to spend? And, on what?