Personal Branding

Advertising Agency New Business: A Personal Update

Peter · July 8, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Here is a quick update on my business life. I’ll be on a mini-vacation for a few days

I started to spin my advertising agency new business consultancy in late February by loading up my blog with keyword-rich “advertising agency new business / business development” content. Around 15,000 words or so in a bunch of evergreen posts. I supported that with tweets for both my posts and retweets of related content.

I continued the inbound marketing program and now have 184 posts.

These include some posts for my book, “Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide.”

I supplemented this blog activity with guest posts on the highly visited AdPulp and Agency Post blogs to start to build authority for peterlevitan.com. I am about to start a series on how clients find and choose advertising agencies for Advertising Week.

I built my agency directory on Pinterest using outsourced help from a great assistant in the Philippines via Odesk. Agencies now send me information on their new websites.

I wrote a couple of white papers on how Seattle and Portland agencies use (or overuse) social media on their websites. I sent Seattle Advertising and Digital Agencies and Their Love Of Social Media and a Portland version to Seattle and Portland agencies. Despite how brilliant the white papers are, I wasn’t surprised that I only got a 5% response (as in, thanks.) Why? I don’t think most agencies are sufficiently curious about virtually anything but their own navel. (I only write this because people tell me they enjoy my honesty.)

I built “The Good, Bad & Ugly”, a review of advertising agency websites and how agencies do or do not do a good job with their interent marketing programs. I gave the presentation in New York to a group of agency CEO’s. I’ve also presented this in Seattle and Portland.

I just ran a Portland Advertising Federation event about how advertising agencies could / should work with startups. I interviewed folks from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike+ Accelerator, Upstart Labs and Opal, a very smart startup that a Portland agency launched. I’ll put up a video of the event soon.

The net.. you may be wondering…

I’ve got agency clients in Portland, New York, Milan and hopefully Mexico (care of a recent discussion.) I’ve worked on agency positioning, agency Internet marketing, the whole enchilada advertising agency new business plan and RFP management. I have been helpful. Or, so they say.

So far so good.

Nerds.com

In the past couple of weeks a team from the USA (that’s me plus one more), Budapest, Scotland and soon Thailand launched a new business based on the power of Nerds (its now in alpha for testing purposes.) Nerds will be a website plus for nerds and the people interested in the nerd lifestyle. Here is a great stat… there are over 2.2 million monthly broad matches for the term “nerds” on Google. This is huge. The goal of the business is to “own” the idea of nerd and monetize it. I’d like to think of the business as becoming a Fab meets Betches Love This.

Cartoon / comics characters might play a large role. We are meeting with a LARGE animation company this week in California. Who knows.

This is my third internet start-up.

Stay way tuned.

Why I Live In Portland Oregon

Peter · June 11, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Estatley has 37 reasons for living in Portland, Oregon. Or, for some, 37 reasons not to.

This is what Portland looked like last weekend:

Jeff Bridges, Widelux & Me

Peter · April 30, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Widelux Camera & Me

This is a Widelux camera. It is a rather unique 35mm swing lens film camera and as I have discovered over the years, it is loved by Jeff Bridges and, yes you guessed it, me.

As Wikipedia says: “The Widelux is a fully mechanical swing-lens panoramic camera first developed in Japan in 1948, with both 35mm (the F6, F7 and F8 models) and medium-format (1500) models available. The WIDELUX cameras manage this trick because of a 26mm lens pivoting on an axis.”

The New York Times article, “The Dude Abides On The Other Side Of The Lens”, just highlighted some of Jeff’s film set work and his thoughts about this strange tool. He is also one of the few Widelux information resources on the web. Here he is on the camera and how he deals with its delights…

The Widelux is a fickle mistress; its viewfinder isn’t accurate, and there’s no manual focus, so it has an arbitrariness to it, a capricious quality. I like that. It’s something I aspire to in all my work — a lack of preciousness that makes things more human and honest, a willingness to receive what’s there in the moment and to let go of the result. Getting out of the way seems to be one of the main tasks for me as an artist.

Here are a couple of shots from a series I did on very tight Japan retail – click them. You can see more of my Widelux photographs from Cambodia and beyond on my photography website.

Are Ad Agency Creatives More Creative When Drunk?

Peter · April 1, 2013 · Leave a Comment

The fabulous Advertising Week Social Club blog asked, “Do You Think Alcohol Makes You More Creative? We’re Putting It To The Test.” As Dave Birss writes…

There’s lots of anecdotal evidence that indicates a couple of drinks can help you creatively. For example, the first piece of copy I ever wrote was produced with the assistance of several pints of Guinness. It ran without any client amends and ended up winning a best copy award. (Conversely, a journey along the Absinth shelf almost got me fired for starting a fight with an Account Director!)

Then in the late 90s a spirit of temperance swept across adland in the UK. And at the same time creative standards seemed to drop. A lot of people suspect there’s some connection there.

As someone who went to art school, started in the New York advertising business in the fueled 1980’s, worked with dozens of creatives around the world and now lives in Oregon, home of craft beers and legalized drugs, I’d have to say that creatives…. Well, I won’t. But watch this video and stay tuned for the results.