Agency Websites

Advertising Creative Awards and Puffy Heads

Peter · July 14, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Ireland Is Now Famous For Three Heads: Guinness. Red. And, Creative.

Advertising agencies love creative awards. In fact, these little sweet proof-that-we-are-very-way-smart-and-cool puppies tend to make creative heads get all sorts of puffy. I’ve been seeing this in action for years and love it all-night-long when MY agency’s creative department wins.

Take a look at Dublin’s Mark and Paddy’s take on those puffy heads for (as Mark and Paddy say):

ICAD is Ireland’s preeminent creative body.
This is what their awards do to creative departments.

Here’s a print ad.

Make sure you see the videos on the Mark and (yes) Paddy website.

I Wanted To Like Grip – But No KISS

Peter · June 23, 2014 · Leave a Comment

I friend sent me to the funny infographic “The Anatomy of An Agency” from Canada’s Grip Limited. It’s at the bottom of this post. The infographic nails advertising agency culture and, based on the number of comments, got well distributed making it a much higher trafficked post that the great majority of agency blog posts. Most of them appear written for the agency itself or their close friends.

OK, nice job so far. I even like the blog’s editorial content in general.

OK, a good first impression so I go to the agency home page (not that easy to get to cause there isn’t a direct link.) That’s where things go horribly wrong. The Grip website is simply too wildly dizzying. Panel after panel. Here are two views of the site. The second view collapses all of the panels.

And, maybe this will work better for you than me… I can’t get the site to scroll up and down and I tried two different browsers.

My point: please do not build websites that make lives more difficult. Keep It Simple Stupid.

This one is one of the most difficult to use ad agency websites I’ve ever experienced. I am sure that there are clients that will get past the design to the really great advertising, thought leadership and cool personality. But, I couldn’t.

Now for the infographic:

Unacceptable Advertising Agency Website

Peter · June 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Months ago I wrote about agencies that use an “Under Construction” message on their website’s front page. I see no excuse for this. None, zero, zip.

I just read an Adage article about Acme Idea Co. resigning the Duracell account. I haven’t see what Acme has been doing for awhile so I went to their website. This is what I found.

Unacceptable for a few reasons.

Why stop marketing?

Why not find a slightly more creative way to transition (I assume they are.)

Why look lame?

A piece of advice: Never, ever go Under Construction or Coming Soon. Its a bad idea.

Advertising Websites Only Get 8 Seconds

Peter · April 18, 2014 · 1 Comment

Let’s start this post with an admission… I don’t have informational graphics on every page of my site (some, but not a lot.) But.. stay tuned cause I have ten cartoons coming from my friend Steve and his The Cartoon Agency that will support my new book’s discussion of the top ten pitch-killing mistakes that even super smart advertising agencies (that’s you amigos) make when they pitch.

8 Seconds, Only

One of the most important discussions I have with my advertising agency clients is about gauging the marketing power of their websites. I start the talk by telling them that I know that critiquing their website is like discussing their kid’s soccer moves. That said, the agencies are paying me to be honest, so I am.

I begin the review process by telling them that their visitors only give them 7 seconds of examination before they stay to learn more or move on. Agencies… you better hook ’em in 7 seconds. I just found out that I am wrong. According to the smart Neil Patel its 8 seconds (more on him later):

“How long do you think your attention span is? Maybe a minute or even two, right? Sadly, your attention span is 8 seconds. That’s one second shorter than that of a goldfish.”

What does that mean for your advertising agency websites? It means that you better pay lots of attention to attention deficit clients that may be looking at ten, twenty or more agency websites before they land on a few to contact. 8 seconds. Keep this in mind and make getting to a point an objective when you build or rebuild your websites. If you want to see how some agencies get this job done, or not, take a look at my set of San Francisco agencies and how they handle their 8 seconds.

Here is how Neil helps us visualize visualization by using his “This Is Your Brain On Visualization” infographic. There is a lot of information here for you and your clients.

Back To Niel Patel

I dig Neil because he provides great insights and is a serial self-promoter worth watching. His stuff works works. His Quicksprout website has a page rank of 5 and he has 1110,000+ Twitter Followers. From Neil’s bio:

Neil Patel is the co-founder of Crazy Egg, Hello Bar and KISSmetrics. He helps companies like Amazon, NBC, GM, HP and Viacom grow their revenue. The Wall Street Journal calls him a top influencer on the web, Forbes says he is one of the top 10 online marketers, and Entrepreneur Magazine says he created one of the 100 most brilliant companies in the world. He was recognized as a top 100 entrepreneur under the age of 30 by President Obama and one of the top 100 entrepreneurs under the age of 35 by the United Nations.

Yeah, this is a bit crazy for a 29 year-old. But, he is surly working it. Check out his outrageously unrelenting promotions. Yes, a bit too many popups and forms for most advertising agency websites, but these is a lot of benchmark sales learning in there.

Last point. He walks his talk. See his visual bio.