Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Agency of the Future

Mary Meeker & The State Of Internet

· · 1 Comment

Mary Meeker – Internet Trends Report

Just in case you haven’t seen Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends 2017, here it is. Highlights include (care of Quartz):

  • Smartphone shipments have continued to slow, with only 3%year-over-year growth from 2015 to 2016.
  • Global internet use continues to grow at 10% year over year, with 3.4 billion people on the internet as of 2016.
  • Internet advertising spending is expected to surpass TV spending in 2017.
  • Combined, Google and Facebook accounted for 85% of the total internet ad revenue growth between 2015 and 2016.
  • Images and voice are replacing typed words in advertising.
  • Google’s voice recognition has hit a word accuracy rate of 95%.
  • There are now 2.6 billion gamers, up from 100 million in 1995.

My primary takeaway for advertising agencies – “MOBILE”

The ADD & ADHD Marketing Advantage

· · Leave a Comment

The ADD & ADHD Marketing Advantage

vector-of-a-cartoon-fast-businessman-on-wheels-outlined-coloring-page-by-ron-leishman-18524You are in the marketing communications business. Your brain has to move at warp speed given today’s fast-paced digital marketing options. You have to juggle one or more intense client requirements and needs. Everything is coming at you. This is OK and you really dig it. You like the variety of your challenges.

There is a decent chance that you have some form of ADD or ADHD. I’ve always thought that I (as well as my marketing colleagues) have ADD / ADHD  or, what my friend Peter Shankman calls Fast Brain. Hmmmm, I like the sound of Fast Brain.

To learn more about Peter’s take on ADD and ADHD and how this is a benefit, not a malaise, head over to his website Faster Than Normal.

download ddAnd, for a more direct take on ADD and your marketing life, read my interview with Peter on HubSpot’s marketing blog: “How ADHD Gave This Tech Founder a Creative Advantage.”

Here is my conclusion:

Adapting Marketing Strategies for Distraction

I am sure that many of you digital marketers were perpetually distracted students like me. I was the type of student that was bored and whose grades never matched his potential. After all, I really didn’t want to have to take biology to fulfill my college science prerequisites.

Fortunately, I managed to find my way to art college and eventually to a long career in advertising and digital marketing — the perfect industry for fast brains.

Shankman thinks that 40% of the population has some degree of ADHD. If this is so (and I agree), then we should consider how to bake this important consumer insight into our marketing strategies.

Of course, this isn’t groundbreaking news. We are well aware of the effect of device distraction and content marketing overload. However, I seldom see marketing communications professionals sit their clients down and tell them that they really only have nano-seconds to deliver a sales proposition. I am talking about the critical importance of having an ‘unignorable’ sales proposition — not just an ad tech solution.

So, go forth and Fast Brain your day.

 

Digital In 2017

· · Leave a Comment

 

107 Slides On What Is Coming In Digital in 2017

Good stuff and some sweet facts. Read on. Share the best tidbits with your clients.

This report is from Simon Kemp. If you want the whole enchilada, go right here. His words…

If you’re looking for more in-depth numbers, the following 19 presentations are probably what you’re looking for.

To make the 3,000+ slides that make up this year’s study more manageable, we’ve clustered individual countries into the various sub-regions used by the United Nations; each presentation has an ‘index’ on the third slide detailing which countries that report contains, with links to all the other reports on the next slide (#4).

Will Marijuana Get Advertising Agencies High?

· · 1 Comment

Will Marijuana Get Advertising Agencies High?

Screen Shot 2017-01-17 at 9.55.11 AMThis is an update to a post I wrote in July, 2015. I must admit that I was right then that marijuana will get advertising agencies high. High as in offering a brand new multi-billion dollar product category that needs agency services. All of them – product design, PR, PPC, SEM, website design, social media, print advertising and on and on. The reason for this update is the Newsweek article, “Here are the businesses taking marijuana products into the mainstream”. Here is a bit from the article. I suggest that your savvy agency will figure out how to get on board this fast moving train.

“With roughly 22 million Americans consuming marijuana on a monthly basis in 2015 and nearly 37 million people admitting to using pot at least once a year, marijuana brands and companies are increasingly looking to reach new consumers with upscale products that go beyond weed’s reputation as an easy high for people who like to wear tie-dye shirts and listen to mellow music. The push is aimed at offering a greater variety of ways for people to consume cannabis, whether they are first-time users or people who may have smoked grass back in the day and are looking to ease back into the drug now that it is legal.

“If you look at what traditionally people think of when they think of a pot shop, they’re thinking of a place with Bob Marley posters in it. There’s nothing mainstream about that. That’s not how you sell anything, but for some reason, that’s how people think you sell pot. That’s got to evolve,” Adam Bierman, CEO and co-creator of MedMen, a California-based marijuana management firm, said during a phone interview.

The marijuana industry is now a $6.7 billion business, according to Forbes. Figures this high aren’t easily achieved, especially not with down-market products sold in cramped stores covered in marijuana symbols, Bierman said.”

FYI, the photo of the Bob Marley product above is from Portland’s Bridge City Collective, a two-shop business that I invested in two years ago. I saw the marijuana train coming down the track and got on board very early. I am including the photo because it is an excellent example of where marijuana industry branding is heading.

—

So, Will Marijuana Get Advertising Agencies High?

Washington i502 Marijuana SalesYes.

But, do not take my word for it. 502DATA is a website that reports on Washington State’s marijuana industry. Take a look at the sales numbers and… you tell me? Will marijuana get advertising agencies high? Um, drive advertising agency revenues higher? Seems logical.

Here are sales numbers for Washington’s producers, processors and retailers in today’s early-stage market. Then imagine that this is a national business that will inevitably experience consolidation.

But, for now just be amazed at the growth of a brand-new product and service category. A big one. Total 2015 Washington marijuana sales could go beyond $400,000,000 in 2015.  [Read more…] about Will Marijuana Get Advertising Agencies High?

Death Of The Brand?

· · Leave a Comment

Death Of The Brand… What Does This Mean For Your Advertising Agency?

download-2017Watch this  L2 video on 2017 predictions. What does it mean for your advertising / digital / design / PR / experiential agency?

I know…. these predictions are both an opportunity and a big problem. I’d grab the opportunity (I love pain points) and I think it is huge. You?

https://www.l2inc.com/video/scott-galloway-and-maureen-mullen-predictions-for-2017