New Business

How To Win An Advertising Award

Peter · October 26, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Go Win An Advertising Award

It took me awhile to fully understand the value of winning an advertising agency award in the in the context of business development. Yes, I know, I should have figured this out a lot earlier. Especially, when you consider that I ran business development at Saatchi & Saatchi in the days when they won everything and later, when I ran my own agency.

While it is fun for the agency staff to win awards (well, the right awards), the true value in winning those shiny objects is in helping clients recognize your brilliance. To put it mildly, clients – as in your prospective clients – are not experts at selecting agencies and this fact is exacerbated by the fact that many agencies, once they make the final cut, kinda look and sound alike. In this environment, awards represent extremely valuable third-party endorsement.

EFFIES prove your strategic chops. Clios and ADDY’s prove creativity. In the media space, MediaPost just announced their Agency of the Year awards. Considering how critical media planning is in today’s fractured media environment, media awards can be leveraged to prove your agency’s media prowess.

Strategic Award Planning

Ok, so you want to incorporate award-winning into your business development plan. Good idea. I know that some of the major agencies approach awards with a very strategic business development perspective. This is a big subject. For now, here are the basics that should help you enter the right award categories.

The Who: What clients do you want to excite? What are their interests, needs, and fears? What do they value – pure creativity, strategy, agency fame (as in hiring an agency because they look real cool)?

The What: There is a big difference between winning a creative award (subjective) and a strategy award (ROI). Some clients need proof that you are creative and some need to know that you know how to deliver on the client’s objectives.

The Where: Sure, winning a Clio is nice. But, most agencies are simply not going to win the big ones. This isn’t because they don’t deserve to. It is because these awards are really set up to honor the bigger agencies – with big award budgets. That’s just how it is – award shows are not about the awards, they are profit centers for the award entities. So, I suggest that some of the better local awards can make a great deal of sense. In this case, base these on where you clients are going to come from. A great example of a powerful local award program is The Rosey Awards from the Portland Ad Fed. In this case, your agency has a good chance to beat Portland’s Wieden & Kennedy powerhouse.

Last point. Be very strategic about how you enter. Study past award shows to see if you can figure out how and why other agencies have won. Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, my first agency, figured out a smart system for EFFIE entries. We studied winning agency applications. Our system helped us become a major winner.

Start Today: Media Post’s ‘Agency of the Year’ Open For Submissions

MediaPost is accepting submissions for its annual ‘Agency of the Year’ awards. If you would like to nominate an organization, please contact joe@mediapost.com by the end of October. We recognize the following categories:

Media Agency, Digital Agency, Social Agency, Search Agency, Programmatic Agency, Mobile Agency, Creative Agency, Holding Company, Client, Supplier, Executive.

The Best Advertising Ever

Peter · October 22, 2016 · 1 Comment

Volkswagen: The Best Advertising Ever. Period.

Best advertising ever?

OK, one of the best advertising campaigns – ever. No question. This legendary campaign from the Mad Men days and Doyle Dane Bernbach was, well, fucking brilliant. Great strategy, lean approach, super fine copy (read it oh ye content writers), art direction and photography. These ads were impossible to NOT read.

Please watch this video below: “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” (especially if you are under 40.) Hear the people who made the ads talk about making some of the smartest advertising ever.

Remember, this campaign pitted Volkswagen’s tiny post-war German car against Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge. Not an easy play. This is a good, free, marketing lesson for us all. Buzzfeed has all of the ads right here.

The BIG Idea

Advertising has gotten a bit too complicated these days. Words like programatic, bots, content, analytics, SEM, funnels, infographics, authentic and on. We can easily forget that is all about the BIG, impossible to ignore, strategic, yet oh so simple… BIG idea. The idea that captures our attention and excites.

Ode to my audience of business development directors: You’ll win more new business if you… Deliver ideas and insights that capture your prospective client’s attention and excite them. AHA! moments just like Volkswagen did.

BIG ideas follow…

Two Advertising Agency & Client Chemistry Strategies

Peter · October 10, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Two Advertising Agency Chemistry Strategies

I have been focused on the idea that interpersonal chemistry is one of the most important decision-making criteria that a client uses when selecting an advertising agency. I also ~~think~~ KNOW that chemistry can be massaged and managed. In fact, if you want to win, you better work on releasing those special business pheromones.

Managing Chemistry

I recently advised an advertising agency on their approach to a pitch that included how to run an interpersonal ‘chemistry’ new business meeting. The agency is one of seven agencies in a pitch for a very large east coast client.

The client asked for a ‘let’s get to know each other’ chemistry meeting because they know that by the time they had narrowed their list from the four thousand agencies out there (yikes) to seven, that much of their decision criteria on which agency to move forward with would come down to likeability and an understanding that the agency had the intelligence to help efficiently grow the client’s business.

The client needed this meeting because…

All Advertising Agencies Look The Same!

Ok, ok, all agencies are not the same. But, I can guarantee you that probably five of the seven agencies are so similar in approach, client base, case histories, skill sets, office furniture, etc. that the client realized that the interpersonal chemistry element was ultimately going to be a critical decision-making factor.

While my agency client and I discussed a range of pitch issues and opportunities, we settled on two must-have’s to make the meeting work in their favor.

Client Meeting Management

First, we discussed how to plan and manage the meeting. If an agency cannot run a smart meeting – especially the chemistry meeting, then the client will immediately begin to think that you cannot run a smart agency client relationship. I am a very strong proponent of the art of meeting management. I suggest that you read this post on how to manage a meeting. Your clients will love you for it. Hmmm, maybe even some of your future clients as well.

Deliver A Trial Run

Since this was a chemistry meeting – a ‘get to know each other’ meeting – I informed agency management that the best way for the agency to demonstrate that they were a good fit for the client was to… act like they already had the account. [Read more…] about Two Advertising Agency & Client Chemistry Strategies

Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development

Peter · September 15, 2016 · Leave a Comment

How To Build A Better, Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program

WARNING: This is a long blog post about how to build a better, smarter advertising agency. Actually, this is Part One of an even longer post. It is a looong post for a couple of reasons.

This is a transcript of a 40-minute interview on advertising agency business development that I did with the super savvy Drew McLellen and his must / should listen to advertising podcast, “Build A Better Agency“.
Google loves loong blog posts. So, having an interview transcribed into text is a very good SEO tactic. I’ve done this before with some of the interviews I did for my book on pitching. Having text allows me (us) to have an audio and text for a blog post which can then be marketed across social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a very smart idea to extend the reach of any thought leadership you do. So easy too.
Some people would rather read an interview than listen to it so here it is.
I want to use Drew as an example of how to do and market a podcast. To date, he has done 49 interview podcasts. Podcasting provides 4 basic but sweet benefits. 1) It is a great way to look and sound like an expert by interviewing other experts; 2) podcasts are relatively easy to do; 3) interviewing people helps you make friends (imagine having an agency podcast in your agency’s specialized category where you interview potential clients); 4) it is all about marketing yourself or your company.

Here is a link to some other smart marketing podcasts.

Build A Better Agency

Watch As Canada Pitches Clinton & Trump

Peter · August 30, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Canada Pitches Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump

I have worked with a few Canadian advertising and digital agencies on their business development programs. I even went so far as to learn Canadian. Even looked at a map of Canada. Note: my personal research indicates that 94% of USA citizens cannot find Toronto on a North American map.

For some reason, and this is way unexpected, Canadian agencies actually have a serious sense of humor. Something most American agencies do not. Crazy right? See what I mean in this post about unignorable agencies. This post includes Canada’s John St.

A head scratcher… Why don’t more advertising agencies employ humor in their new business programs? In most cases, agencies say close to exactly what the agency down the street says in the same way that the other agency says it. Dumbfounding if you think that agencies are in the business of helping their clients stand out from highly competitive packs.

Humor tells stories. Humor sells. Humor gets passed around. Humor goes viral (like the following video will.)

Now, With Even More Laughs

Today, I offer more from Zulu Alpha Kilo and its pitch for the Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump campaign accounts. As ZAK says:

After winning Ad Age Small Agency of the year in 2016, Toronto-based Zulu Alpha Kilo decided to break into the U.S. market with a tongue in cheek political satire. Frank Zulu is the fictional founder of the agency and a character created for Zulu’s parody website which pokes fun at the absurdities of all agency websites and even Zulu itself.

Ok, on to the Clinton and Trump pitch video.

The wall copy (think Mexicans and emails) alone is worth the price of watching.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEvx7_Lc7Lg&feature=youtu.be