Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Ad Agency CEO

A Coronavirus Ad Agency Business Plan

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A Coronavirus Ad Agency Business, Marketing, and Personal Plan

A Coronavirus Ad Agency Business PlanNoah Kagan and my thinking on your coronavirus ad agency business plan.

You know who I am, right? Regardless, here is my Advertising Agency Survival Guide. Please read and make adjustments to how you run your agency. I want you to view the video below so my guide will open up in a new window.

Next, I am going to continue to write about what I think you should be doing. Yes, I admit it, I know what I am talking about. Plus, maybe, more importantly, I know WHO knows what THEY are talking about. Like the video below from Noah Kagan – AppSumo guy.

Do you know Noah Kagan? He is the Chief Sumo at Sumo Group — where he helps entrepreneurs kick more ass. Before that, he was employee #30 at Facebook,  #4 at Mint, and worked at Intel.

Key Noah Kagan Coronavirus Ad Agency Business Plan Advice – Important Stuff

This one from me… I think that anyone over 55 should go mostly cash. I mean, what part of this economy is going to spring back in the next 12 to 24 months? OK, maybe DTC, oil, three retailers, three airlines, Uber, online learning… + Companies with mucho cash.

Watch your costs. This is the only thing that you can control. Make the necessary cuts early.

Market your ad agency. More blog posts, more insight-oriented content, PPC ads. How about some research in your expert categories?

Partner. Maybe even buy a cheap but smart small agency that adds to your overall offer. Are you “full service”? if so, get really full service and buy a PPC agency.

Help your clients with their payments before they cut you off.

Now, The Video, Recession Proof Business Strategies

Noah’s Main Points. My Interpretation.

Pay very close attention to your revenues and adjust your net income. Every 7 days.

Look at your agency website traffic and conversion rates, email signups (you have an email program (right?) and whatever you track. Pay attention to your brand.

Market your agency. Keep at it. But, be cool about it. No sales pressure. Insights, show empathy, please.

Have 20 months of capital for business. 12 months personal (at least). Look, I know that having cash is hard for some people. Like, you need to live. But, I am putting my pessimistic hat on. If we are about to go into a depression rather than a recession… be ready. I do not want to be a downer. But, this is the advice I give to my kids too.

And, Please Talk To Me

Remember the.. Advertising Agency Survival Guide.

Advertising Agency Coaches Are Pissing Me Off.

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$2,250 For A Group-Grope Agency Coaches Seminar? Huh? WTF!

One of my California ad agency clients passed on an advertising agency coaching seminar email solicitation. She pointed out that two of my advertising agency coaching competitors are charging $2,250 for agency managers to attend a group seminar on agency positioning.

Huh, I’m like, $2,250 to attend a group-grope seminar that could not conceivably recognize or focus on the very unique challenges confronting individual, as in very different, advertising agencies. I’m sorry about two things. 1) Any coach charging $2,250 for what I am sure is a mostly canned seminar (just an educated guess) and, 2) Exploiting today’s advertising agency marketplace in a very challenging environment. By the way, here is a bit of the sales copy:

Experience the confidence that comes with deep expertise

Orientation Week: April 20, 2020 / All course modules drop the week of April 27, 2020 / $2,250 per firm principal

OK, Back To Free.

Do you need confidence? I got that.

I’ve been advising and coaching my ad agency clients that they need to hug their best clients. Give some strategic thinking away. No obligation. Provide brilliant, market-relevant insights for free. Keep your client friends close.

Hugging. Here is my free offer. I’d love to talk with you about your current issues and, importantly, opportunities – for free / no obligation. We’ll do some scenario planning I know its tough out there – I have some rather strong ideas.

Want to move fast? Contact me here.

By the way, if you would rather spend the $2,250, let me know and I will pass you along.

Leverage My Real Market Experience.

I’ve lived through multiple advertising recessions (albeit lighter than this one) as a Fortune 100 account director and director of business development at Saatchi (New York & London); the CEO founder of two Internet start-ups and the owner of my own two-office advertising agency. Plus, I’ve custom coached over 100 advertising agencies.

SO — Take me up on my free offer. Let’s talk specifically about your agency (not in a mushy group format), its management, staffing, clients and growth potential. Use my brain and experience to help you to position your agency for long-term success. For free. I’m giving back. Zero obligation. Keep your $$$.

One more thing, if you are looking to reposition your agency, as in being specialized, something I think you need to be doing right now, here is a link to my very well-read post on advertising agency positioning.

The Advertising Agency Of The Future

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What Does The Advertising Agency Of The Future Look Like? How About Your Agency?

The advertising agency of the future needs some serious planning and agility. No surprise here. But, what is surprising to me is the lack of attention paid to how to craft an advertising agency for the future.

Just for the hell of it. I’ll start with the good old days.

My first job in advertising was at Dancer Fitzgerald & Sample. Back in the 1980’s DFS was New York’s largest advertising agency. We were sweetly based in the iconic Chrysler Building. At that time, we did not spend lots of gray matter on thinking about the future of the advertising agency business because we were making a 15% commission on media and 16.5% on production. We had a sweet client list that included General Mills, P&G, RJR Nabisco, Sara Lee, Northwest Airlines (I ran the account and our annual profits were $6 million on $9 million in revenues), HP and Toyota. As you might expect, we were not too concerned about reinvention. All this client and revenue firepower helped Saatchi & Saatchi love and buy Dancer in 1986.

Today advertising is a radically different business and ad agencies need to be thinking about how to be positioned for a future where multi-year AOR clients; 15% media commissions; three primary media types (TV, print, radio); a positive global network effect and loyalty are attributes of the past.

Not to get too down, but today the advertising world is about project work, crazy price consciousness, competition from all sides (large consultancies, in-house agencies and your ex-Creative Director who does just fine as a freelancer).

Bummed Out?

Look, for many agencies, it is kinda fucked up out there. As the famous Chinese curse says,

“May you live in interesting times”.

But, but, there are still agencies that grow and make bucks. You can too.

So, in preparation for this blog post – yes, it is ultimately about how to position your agency for the future – I read a bunch of articles on “the advertising agency of the future.” Not too surprising, this is a hot topic.

Interesting (as in ‘Uh Oh’) the first page of Google has articles on your future from traditional agency killers like Deloitte, Accenture, Adobe, CMO.com (an Adobe site).

The agency industry perspective is not on Google’s page one. It isn’t until page two that Inc., AdAge, The Drum and the ANA get to chime in.

I stopped trying to find an actual advertising agency perspective delivered via this search term by the time I got to page four. Do the big guys (even WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, etc.) not want to discuss the future?

Some Findings On The Future on Advertising

Here are some of the highlights from my research. I’m listing these in random order. I’ll have my personal thoughts a bit later. [Read more…] about The Advertising Agency Of The Future

Client Thoughts On The Advertising Agency RFP Process

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The Advertising Agency Client RFP – Go Or No Go

As an agency owner and business development director at Saatchi, I received many RFP’s — Request For Proposals. The reaction to receiving an RFP ranged from delight (YES, a big brand and client is interested in us) to dismay (a brand is asking us to respond to what is clearly an assignment that is not predicated on the client’s understanding of what we do for a living (example, asking us to build Android apps when we didn’t).

Responding to an RFP can be very time consuming and expensive for any agency. The costs include direct labor, out of pocket costs and the cost of deflecting staff attention from existing client and business development work. I outlined the cost of responding to RFI’s, RFP’s and actual pitches in my book “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches”. Believe me, the costs can easily go into the thousands.

The bottom line is for your agency to have a clear set of rules that dictate when you should respond to an incoming RFP. Swinging at every ball is not a great way to hit home runs and manage your business.

Some RFP Related Expert Opinions

I am a member of a primarily senior client Slack group. I asked the group for their thoughts about the RFP process. My question was about how many agencies are sent an RFP for a given program.

The Peter RFP Question:

“Here’s a quick question for people that have asked advertising / design etc. agencies to respond to an RFP… How many shops did you ask when you sent out the RFP? I have an agency client that is now sitting on 3 RFP’s and is a bit overwhelmed. I’m helping them cull the list but have this general question. Thank you in advance for any help.”

Answers:

Note, in the interest of privacy, I scrubbed out the name of the group members.
  • Typically you go to 5-6, then cull to 3 agencies for a proposal. If it was a mailed RFP with no calls or capabilities first, don’t go after it.
  • You can also ask the client how many RFP’s were sent out and they should respond to you. But when a client sends out to 20 shops for proposals, you can typically smell that out and it’s highly recommended an agency does not play in that space OR requests a more intimate process.
  • Usually easy to spot the mass outreach RFP’s, they’re often sloppy documents with not much thought/consideration. Big red flag in my experience. Worth identifying which feel as though they have had most time invested in them for a measure on how ‘real’ the opportunity is.
  • I’d also add from the agency side — try to get an intro call with the prospective client to talk through the RFP before you decide to submit and put the team through the proposal rigor. Sometimes once you get them on the phone — you often get a much better sense if you’ll be successful with each other.
  • Also, it’s telling if they won’t speak to you before receiving a proposal :slightly_smiling_face:
  • Agree. Clients should do their homework and find the shops that they respect, thinking or work you admire vs. a fishing expedition. I usually advise around sending in the area of 6-7 with the expectation that 1-2 agencies will drop out / decline
  • I agree. Somewhere in the 5-8 range feels right for an RFP. As a client, it is too much work to do more than that. If the client is not invested to really spend the time to determine if the fit is right, that tells you something. Personally, I have always liked our agency partners to feel like an extension of our team and respect what they bring to the table and the effort required to do the work.

Peter Again

I agree that it is up to agency management to really look hard at an incoming RFP and determine if this is an account you really want, can get and is worth the big effort. As my friends mentioned, it is incumbent on agency leadership to learn more from the prospective client before answering the RFP. If the client does not have the time for a call… drop it.

Being Mr. Nice Guy…

If you have an RFP on your desk today and are not sure if you should respond, give me a shout. I’ll spend a few minutes helping you make that decision. Gratis.

Gary Vaynerchuk Loves You And Your Ad Agency

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Contrary to (some) popular belief, Gary Vaynerchuk actually loves you and your advertising agency. He wants to help you grow. Here is my take on today’s Gary Vaynerchuk plus a rather inspiring B2B marketing video.

FYI: One of my best-read blog posts is “Gary Vaynerchuk Is Full Of Shit.” It is a response to his early damning of the advertising industry. Take a read. By the way, it has been read over 5,000 times. Why? Well, putting “Gary Vaynerchuk’ and “Full Of Shit” in your headline gets Google’s attention and speaks to my audience.

My original sense of Gary being full of shit stemmed from Gary’s 2015’s “Do you know the problem with Marketing?” episode of the Ad Age Digital Crash Course:

Here’s the ‘shit’ part. In the video, GaryVee pontificates in ‘Gary Speak’ about how advertising agencies don’t care about selling products (only about winning awards); that emotion does not sell (tell that to Apple’s “Think Different”); that ‘traditional’ advertising is inefficient (like much of digital isn’t); that creatives might want to consider shooting 10 spots for $300K each vs. one for $3 million (this is a new idea??? what world is he living in?) and that maybe we should think about testing advertising before we run it (hmm… that’s a new one).

I love self-promotion. And I get railing at the old ways of doing business to further one’s cause. But, please, cut the way too obvious crap and don’t be insulting.

Gary Vaynerchuk Is Not Full Of Shit – He Wants To Love You (And Your Ad Agency)

OK, that was Gary in 2015 when he was building Vaynermedia and needed some service differentiation. Let’s cut to 2019.  He recently spoke to a meeting of the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts. Watch the speech and Q&A below. Gary has both mellowed and has a lot of insight to deliver – to any B2B marketer. Just like your advertising agency.

A couple of Gary’s key points:

Buy underpriced attention for your agency marketing. This includes hammering underutilized LinkedIn. Hammer. Post like 40X a day.

Create longer content, like Gary’s videos, and cut them up for distribution. Amplify everything.

Don’t go out and hire a “social media expert” to run your program. YOU spend the 50 hours to learn it before you can ever judge the value of the freelancer/expert. I remember asking advertising agency CEO’s at Advertising Week if they ever placed a Google ad. The answer was no. I was like, are you kidding me? Do you even know WTF is going on?

Gary was asked how he finds the time to get things done. His answer – you probably waste three hours a day on really stupid shit. That 1-hour meeting should be 15 minutes.

If you run a local advertising agency, let’s say in Raleigh Durham, create a local show. Do a podcast, a local newsletter, a blog… just become known locally for your agency voice.

Big One: Romance your clients. Ever say thank you? Call up a client one year later to discuss that great project you did 12 months earlier? Send an unexpected gift? Call back a prospect that has fallen off your A-List? Find a good reason to say, Howdy.

The GaryVee Video…