Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Boomercide

Stuff’s Happening

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Time Keeps On Ticking

Bomberos-21Some things on my plate. Just thought I’d share them to get out a quick personal update.

I am now into my 8th month of living in Mexico. This was a great decision and great timing!

I am in the process of writing a long(ish) blog post on lead generation -> lead nurturing -> pitching -> closing. All tailored to my advertising, digital, design, etc. agency readers.

I am writing my presentation on agency business development for my talk at the huge (fabulous, great, incredible — Thank You Donald) PPC Hero Conference in L.A. in April. This link, go to this conference, it is the largest PPC conference, gets you a nice discount.

I am getting ready to interview Peter Shankman on the gift of ADD / ADHD and its relationship to working in an advertising agency and knowing how to get the attention of B2C and B2B ‘consumers.’ This will become a guest post on HubSpot and then amplified across my social networks.

I was just interviewed by Paul Wicker for the AdStage podcast. I’ll let you know when it gets published.

I am toying with the idea of writing a new book. This one on why you will NEVER get to, or want to retire. It would be an update to my ‘traing wheels’ book Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide. Boomercide was my first book. It about how you can use suicide as a financial planning tool. I’m serious.

And….

I am working on my 3-year Mexican photo project GENTE.MX  I am in the process of photographing my town, San Miguel de Allende. Website up soon. Two images from the 300 – 500+ series are above and below.

SMA Street 4 stars 10.16-1

Write Your Advertising Agency Book

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My Books Make Me Happy

Levitan Pitch coverThis post was generated by my smiling at Powell’s Books. See why below.

I’ve written two books. Both are self-published on Amazon as a book-book and eBook. The first, Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide was my training-wheels book. It is about using suicide as a financial planning tool (OK, and a deep discussion of suicide itself).

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. (yes you can learn more about it and then buy it at the top of this page) is a best seller in the narrow category of advertising agency business development books. It has worked hard as a business development tool for me and because it has sold well, it generates some cash, too.

That’s two books. I am already thinking trough book #3. Yes, folks, you can publish books too and should think hard about the value of taking the time to write a book as an agency marketing tool. It isn’t as difficult as you think and an agency is perfectly positioned to get that book out the door..

Here are links to a couple of “how-to’s”….

How to Write An Advertising Agency Book. This post includes a video of my HubSopt book writing presentation.

Yes, You Can Write And Publish A business Book In 6 Months. Yes, you can!

Happy At Powell’s Books

So I am cruising through Portland’s Powell’s City Of Books (it’s the largest used and new bookstore in the world, occupies an entire city block and sells over 1 million books.) As a lark, I typed my name into their database and… yup, my book The Levitan Pitch. was listed. This was a surprise because the book is only distributed on Amazon and must have made it to Powell’s as a used book sale. That means that someone in Portland bought the book and then sold it to Powell’s. Cool. Everyone wins.

Here’s what I saw on the screen…

FullSizeRender copy

 

Woody Allen’s Take On Living Backwards

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Woody-AllenWoody Allen’s Ultimate Happy Ending

In honor of Woody’s 80th birthday, I offer his take on life.

“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go collect your pension, and then when you start work, you get a gold watch and a party on your first day. You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high school. You then go to primary school, you become a kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you become a baby until you are born. And then you spend your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa-like conditions with central heating and room service on tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila!

You finish off as an orgasm!”

(Photo by Irving Penn)

Side Note

I am a New Yorker who grew up on the upper west side. A Jewish New Yorker to be exact. One of my specialities was explaining Woody’s movie schticks to my parochial school girl friends and two mid-western wives.

Switzerland, Australia, Norway, Sweden — Not The USA

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In “The lottery of life. Where to be born in 2013”, The Economist tells us what are the best countries to born in today. Switzerland is #1 and Australia is #2. USA is only #16. You will have to take a look at the criteria to find out why. But, I’ll go with any countries in the top 10. But, moving down the Economist list would you rather live in the UAE than in France or Italy? Yikes.

My primary take away is that, at least according to The Economist*, the USA isn’t the place to start out any more.

* The independent variables in the estimating equa­tion for 2006 include: material wellbeing as measured by GDP per head (in $, at 2006 constant PPPS); life expect­ancy at birth; the quality of family life, based primarily on divorce rates; the state of political freedoms; job se­curity (measured by the unemployment rate); climate (measured by two variables: the average deviation of minimum and maximum monthly temperatures from 14 degrees Celsius; and the number of months in the year with less than 30mm rainfall); personal physical security ratings (based primarily on recorded homicide rates and ratings for risk from crime and terrorism); quality of community life (based on membership in so­cial organisations); governance (measured by ratings for corruption); gender equality (measured by the share of seats in parliament held by women).