Ad Agency CEO

Your Advertising Agency Will Get Fired

Peter · February 16, 2019 · Leave a Comment

One of the tenets of my business development system is the understanding that your advertising agency will get fired by virtually every one of your project work and AOR clients. This means that you better be out there finding your next set of clients because your current clients will sooner or later walk out the back door.

To get even more painful, we all need to get over the disastrous track record of agencies that wait till they get fired to get fired up about running a new business/sales program. The standard, awful, message is that the agency was too busy working on its current clients to run a solid business development program. You know, the horrible saying… “we are like the shoemaker who can’t make shoes for his kids.”

I’ve written in the past about why advertising agencies get fired – right here. This post expands on that review. But first, here is a key finding I wrote about a couple of years ago:

Why do advertising and digital agencies get hired and fired? A key reason for getting fired (other than the new Marketing Director’s need to look active; and an agency’s failure to keep up with the rapid pace of change) is very often the very same reason clients hire agencies in the first place…

It has a lot to do with interpersonal chemistry according to Darren Woolley of Australia’s TrinityP3, a leading global advertising agency search consultant and client advisor. I love this point: “It’s all about the relationship.”

Why You Will Be Fired & How To Stop It

There has been a bunch of research about the primary reasons that clients fire agencies. While getting fired is somewhat inevitable, I think that agency management must be very cognizant of the reasons and manage their agency and staff accordingly.

The smartest, most aware agencies get fired less frequently.

Let’s walk through the reasons you will get fired. I’ll be brief because I believe that most of these can be managed down without a huge effort.

It’s Much About KPI’s and Return On Investment

I counsel all of my agency clients that return on investment, the client’s investment in their marketing programs must yield a positive and calculated sales return on every dollar they spend. Obvious, right? That said, it is amazing to see how many advertising agencies cannot calculate ROI based on a client’s KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators). Some agencies do not even ask about key performance metrics. [Read more…] about Your Advertising Agency Will Get Fired

Would You Buy Your Advertising Agency?

Peter · January 8, 2019 · Leave a Comment

If You Put Your Advertising Agency Up For Sale… Would You Buy It?

I could turn the important question, “Would you buy your advertising agency?” into a long blog post. But, good news, I won’t. I’ll get to the point.

I just finished listening to Kara Swisher interview Khosla Ventures’ partner Keith Rabois – On The Future Of Innovation In Silicon Valley on Recode Decode.

Wowzer… is this guy smart and opinionated. Please listen to this interview. I also follow him on Twitter – @rabois.

This is his investment criteria. If you applied it to the sale of your agency, would you buy you?

What is anomalous? (As in, deviating from what is standard, normal, or expected.).

What “secret” is the company predicated on? What could this be?

Could this be one of the most important companies on the planet?

What is the accumulating advantage?

Can the founder attract the talent requisite to achieve the vision?

Why do we have a comparative advantage?

These are really tough questions. Especially if you think that advertising, PR and design agencies can’t generate meaningful differentiation. But, they can.

Are you working on that?

Will you ever sell your advertising agency?

I sold mine. It took a very strategic effort to build value a year plus ahead of that sale. If you want to sell your agency, even a couple of years from now, you need to build it for a sale.

Ask the big question… “Would you buy your agency?” If the answer is no. Well, its time to rethink your offer.

I have written more about selling an agency: Will you ever sell your advertising agency?

Cures For Poor Advertising Agency Profits

Peter · November 26, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Cures For Poor Advertising Agency Profits

I work to provide cures for low advertising agency profits. That is my specialty. I do not get many calls from super successful, as in high-margin agencies unless they are very very hungry to expand. I LOVE those call from the relentless.

Here Is A Key Question

Within the range of the business questions that I use at the start of an agency business development assignment, there is one simple, but revealing question:

Why do you run your advertising, PR, digital agency?

This question generally yields a somewhat standard answer…

The marketing communications industry (advertising, digital marketing, PR) is fun.

No surprise here. Marketing hits many sweet spots including working with a wide array of clients and their issues (great for advertising people with ADHD); delivering marketing that drives sales is fulfilling; the daily use unique skills; being paid for creative thinking; working with fun people; it beats owning a dry cleaner shop. I don’t usually get told that people make a pant load of money. For most ad shops, those days are (unfortunately) over.

Super high-profit days are in the past due to the move to fee-based compensation; absurdly competitive price cutting; the art of giving services away for free; incessant cost-cutting; increasing workload; increasing advertising platforms; staffing issues; the commoditization of services; claiming the impossible to own “we are creative”; not zeroing in on the most important client need of all… business results.

OK, OK, Enough!

Elemental Cures To Grow Advertising Agency Profits

Is Saying Fck (You Know What I Mean) Cool?

Peter · October 23, 2018 · 1 Comment

Can you say ‘fck’ in your B2B marketing?

(Before I start, a side note… I originally had the URL: www.peterlevitan.com/issayingfuckcool I now know that Google does not like the word Fuck – so I took out the “U” from any Google heat seeking search missile.) We’ll see if this post gets indexed now. See at the bottom of this post for an article about Google’s no-mas potty-mouth.)

I have a client, a brilliant agency client in the data-marketing space. A real data scientist. He grows brands leveraging the best of Adobe and the Google Marketing Platform (here is how Google describes the GMP):

Google Marketing Platform brings together DoubleClick Digital Marketing and the Google Analytics 360 Suite to help you plan, buy, measure and optimize digital media and customer experiences in one place. Google Marketing Platform helps you deliver more relevant and effective marketing, while ensuring that you respect your customers’ privacy and give them control over their data.

Data marketing rules. But, he has a problem. He only aims to work with clients that really want to leverage data to grow their business. Apparently, it is difficult to find the clients that actually GET IT. That said, he gets lots of inquiries. However, many are either poor leads for many reasons (many need lots of training) or are not willing to take the multi-month plunge/commitment to work into a very successful data-driven program.

‘Fuck’

Last week we discussed the use of the word ‘fuck’ to arrest attention and to help cull out the serious leads from the explorers. In this case, can you say ‘fuck’ on your home page? Essentially, something like this (just an example)…

We Are Looking For The Best And Brightest Clients That Want To Fucking Kill It Using The World’s Best Data-Marketing.

I pointed to Gary Veynerchuck as an example of a media personality that uses ‘fuck’ a lot to, yup, help cull out the serious leads from the explorers. It is difficult to paraphrase Gary but his mantra is hey, get the fuck on board the digital train.

Find Your Active Words

This is not a long blog post on the use of challenging words. But, I do want to make that point that you might want to consider actually telling the people that visit your home page that you are looking for the right fucking clients. The use of the word might even net you the balls to the wall clients that you want.

If the ‘F’ word scares you… just try having some attitude.

Oh, the Google article:

F***=off, Google tells its staff: Any mention of nookie now banned from internal files, URLs.

Amsterdam Is Fun

Peter · May 27, 2018 · Leave a Comment

KesselsKramer Makes Amsterdam Fun

Yeah, you know Amsterdam is fun. I’ve just had that confirmed: spring weather; the gorgeous canals; tall blondes; really fine design; marijuana is legal (but, I am from Portland so who cares.) And the two best photography museums I’ve been to. Foam and Huis Marseilles. I’ll put links to them at the bottom.

Getting to the real point… there is an Amsterdam agency that has never been boring. Never been unignorable. From their website history to their publications, they act different.

Different in a world of zillions of agencies. This is a good thing.

KesselsKramer

On my first day in Amsterdam, I took a random walk and found an excellent photography bookstore that had books by Erik Kessels, one of KesselsKramer’s founders. I already own a couple from his series In Almost Every Picture. My books include a flat-headed rabbit and a woman that never gets out of her car. Erik’s books are mostly sold out but you can find some on the KesselsKramer website and on Amazon.

Back To Fun

I’ve written about KesselsKramer’s approach to acting and looking and sounding different (rare in the agency world). This was way apparent when they had an ever-changing website plus an absurdist angle. You can see my take on their approach here.

The agency’s current website is tamer. However, take a hard look and you’ll see that these guys understand the power of the different thing. This makes it way easier for a future client or employee to want to make contact. Yo, good vibes and contact are what an agency website is all about.

Why is fun excluded from the way most agencies represent themselves? This has always baffled me. Sure agencies need to be serious as they help marketers market and have to be prudent with client budgets. But, unlike accountants, agencies can offer a bit of humor, fun and even sound a bit over the top creative. Afterall, creativity and fun are what the client organization does not have.

Things I like:

Clean, simple graphic approach.

To the point agency description: “Established in 1996, KesselsKramer is an independent communications agency in Amsterdam, London and now in Los Angeles with about 50 people of 10 different nationalities. We bring brands and communities together by creating meaningful experiences in every media imagined.”

Need more? Here is what the L.A. office says (Hmm, I’d like to meet and eat with these guys.): “KK Los Angeles is a communications agency, original content studio and art gallery all under one roof. We set up shop in the heart of gallery row in Chinatown and promise to blur the lines between culture, commerce, content and collaboration.”

KK leads with the work. (Though, I am not a huge fan of carousels.)

Their work + cases make me want to work with them. Here is one sweet client case + work. It’s for ONZV, a healthcare insurer. Not the usual.

The Exhibitions and Publishing sections deliver proof that this is not your ordinary agency. Please dig in. When many agencies think that brewing their own beer is the cool thing to do, KK has been a serious member of the Amsterdam art scene for years.

Read their 100 FAQ’s.

The Photography Bookshop & Museums

Foam and Huis Marseilles.

PhotoQbookshop.

Yup, Amsterdam is fun. Especially the art.