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Marketing

Pinterest Growth & Men – A Missed Opportunity

Peter · March 12, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Its nice to be special. Seems I am. I’m a member of the 5% of men that use Pinterest (see my Advertising Agency Directory.)

I’ve got to imagine that the number of men using Pinterest will increase due to Pinterest’s ease of use and visual backbone (I recently stumbled upon a London escort agency that uses Pinterest!) Beyond escorting, Pinterest is now a major source of referral traffic — beating out even Twitter. Here is a chart from eMarketer on Pinterest demographics and one from  Shareaholic on Pinterest’s growth.

With the rush to social media, why aren’t more advertising guys using Pinterest…. or, just checking it out? I bet your client knows more about it than you do.

emarketer pinterest demos

 

pinterest growth

Anomaly: Powerful “About Us” Website Copy

Peter · March 11, 2013 · 1 Comment

Like most websites, advertising and digital agency websites have About Us sections. Read them here. Unfortunately, most agency About Us sections are uninspiring. This is a big missed opportunity.

Anomaly   New York   London   AmsterdamThe agency Anomaly (one of the most effective agency brand names by the way – a perfect agency brand name for our times), kicks it by just listing its excellent press from major league publications. What more could the agency possibly say about themselves that would inspire an incoming call from a mega client?

Just read the glowing press. The copy hits all of the current client-think hot buttons (“thinks different, new model agency, idea-led, structured for innovation.”) You know that Anomaly is cranking its PR machine and/or its leaders are as good at promoting themselves as they are promoting their clients. Strangely  most agencies are a bit too reticent when it comes to PR.  I’ve seen this reticence even at agencies with savvy PR partners. Why wouldn’t you want to seek out and massage trusted third-parties to generate this kind of lavish praise. In Anomaly’s case, it’s praise that tells us what to expect.

Since its inception in 2004, the founders and directors have truly shown a different way of doing things, blurring the borders between providing traditional marketing services and working as a business development partner. Eschewing the traditional client/agency relationship, Anomaly works to develop intellectual property for both itself and for its clients…
Business Week

When a client comes in with an advertising problem, Anomaly addresses it more broadly as a business issue, analyzing everything from design to product development.
Fast Company

Anomaly bills itself very clearly as a new model agency. It describes itself as a response to the notion that the old agency models “are all broken” and “the traditional solutions are becoming less and less effective”. Its positioning sounds like a bunch of cliches, because so many agencies are talking about the need to re-gear their approach around the same principles: ideas-led, media-neutral, integrated, multi-disciplinary. Anomaly, though, launched with these principles at its core.
Campaign

Anomaly is definitely not an “Ad agency” the company sets store by developing its own intellectual property which it can license to clients in return for share in revenues. Their aspiration is to be a product developing IP company, marketing their own portfolio of IP as well as doing that for major brands.
Creative Review

As you might expect from its name, Anomaly is no ordinary agency; it is more of a response to the countless calls for agencies to drag themselves into the 21st century.
Campaign

Anomaly decries tradition and craves revolution. Its real selling point is that its principals have diverse skill sets in interactive marketing, media strategy, and design – as well as advertising – so that clients can have faith they will get a marketing solution rather than an ad campaign.
AdAge

“They were intriguing to us because they weren’t mired down in a lot of layers. They were great creative and strategic people on a mission to create a vision for their agency to solve client problems,” says Sara Schmid, advertising manager. “They were very conscientious … about how things worked in stores, how the visual language would play into it.”
Adweek

The agency [Anomaly] is structured for innovation and multidisciplinary problem solving – not just the partners, but every member of the team contributes on every project on all levels.
Creativity

Anomaly have started up to capitalize on the desire among marketers to do things differently – and the inability of many bigger agencies to accomplish that.
New York Times

An Agency Website That Works From Copacino+Fujikado

Peter · March 2, 2013 · 5 Comments

Hi.

If you go to AdPulp… You will see a post I put up yesterday on how the Seattle agency Copacino+Fujikado has done a smart digital trick with their website that puts most other ad agency (and digital for that matter) “wanna-be” we’ll show you our social chops efforts to shame.

Why Don’t Advertising & Digital Agencies Have A Business Plan?

Peter · February 26, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Today’s marketing advertising and digital agencies need a well-considered marketing plan to plan and build a profitable marketing communications agency for the future. The problem: most agencies don’t have a plan.

Through my experience as a board member of the Portland Advertising Federation, a business development director working across the global Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide network, President of the Newspaper Association of America’s Digital Federation and an Internet entrepreneur, I have been continually amazed that most agencies, media and tech companies don’t have a master plan. Considering the rapid changes happening in the advertising and technology industries, I can’t imagine navigating the marketplace without one. [Read more…] about Why Don’t Advertising & Digital Agencies Have A Business Plan?

Me-Too Boring Ad Agencies and The Harlem Shake

Peter · February 21, 2013 · 1 Comment

AdAge writes,

A staggering 60 agencies –and counting– have already put their own spin on the Internet phenomenon, according to a Tumblr that’s been set up just to collect examples, called “Harlem Shake Agency.”  So far there have been videos by shops including TBWA Paris, Grey Moscow, DDBBarcelona and M&C Saatchi Johannesburg — evidence, clearly, that the meme has gone international.

No, sorry… its about the paucity of advertising originality. OK, its fun. But, this is an industry where agencies should be talking up real creativity not me-too creativity. 60 agencies doing the same thing… and promoting it???

From the ever entertaining Ad Contrarian,

Slaves To Trendiness

Take a look through any agency website and you’re sure to read about how innovative they are. They do things differently. They have a unique perspective.Spend time at these agencies, on the other hand, and you’re sure to find out how absurdly derivative and slavishly trendy they are.According to AdAge no fewer than 60 agencies have so far posted videos of their staff doing the Harlem Shake.Not only are agency cretins posting Harlem Shake videos, but so are advertising “educational” institutions like the Miami Ad School and the VCU Brandcenter. If that’s not enough for you, so have Pepsi, A&W, Chili’s, Google, and Facebook.

I guess one of the positive things about the web is that the life cycle of these memes is so short that by the time these dimwits have posted these monstrosities they are already past their sell-by.

 

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