Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Leica’s 100th Anniversary and a sweet tribute to the power of the camera from F/nazca Saatchi & Saatchi. One of the Grand Prix Winners of the 2015 Cannes Lions International Festivity of Creativity.
My history… my second camera was an M3. I shouldn’t have sold it.
Watch the power…
FYI: This was originally written in 2015. As of July 2016, I now live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This is one of North America’s coolest towns and I can still run my ad agency consultation business c/o the sweet waves of Wi-Fi.
December 22, 2015. Sayulita, Mexico.
This is a personal story.
I’ve been asked about life after advertising by many of my clients. And, why not. Advertising owners (my case) wonder if and how they can sell their agency and then wonder ‘what’s next?’
Ad workers see that they will probably age out of the industry by their late forties (a fucking huge problem for our industry’s brain drain that is exacerbated by the absurd notion that it’s a young person’s industry. However the BIG fact is that the margins are so slim that agencies can’t afford to pay their older employees decent salaries and associated benefits).
In other cases, people just get fried crisp or get fired and want out.
In the interest of speed, here are my two lives after advertising. If you have a few more minutes, check out my It’s Me page to read a bit more about my global and local advertising and client side Internet experience.
1995 – 2001. I left Saatchi in 1995 to work for Advance Internet, a division of The Newhouse’s Advance Publications. I was an early CEO in the reinvention of online news. I then went on to found and run ActiveBuddy. You might have played with our SmarterChild natural language bot / app.
2001 – today. After SmarterChild (a long story) and 9/11 (I was fairly close to ground zero), my wife and I decided that we’d move to Oregon (Bend and Portland) after I bought the ad agency Citrus. I ran that for 8 years. I enjoyed selling it. The experience reminded e of selling my sailboat. The two best days were the day I bought it and the day I sold it.
I started this advertising agency business consultancy after I sold my agency and was asked by a couple of friends to help them craft a new business program. Citrus had done quite well. I’ve been applying my Saatchi and Citrus knowledge to help dozens of agencies build growth strategies during the past four years.
I took my skills and founded a consultancy. I’m not unique. But, people love it when I tell that I can work from any part of the world (thank you WIFI and Skype). I kinda lucked into this new career, but I recommend that you do some planning because… you will have a life after advertising.
Smart Passive Income: Check out the guru on the idea of earning passive income. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income is a simply brilliant how to start a live-anywhere make real-money business. He made $108,000 last month! Online! In his jammies! Ok, not that easy but… read him.
Grow Supply: Ali Mese tells you how to succeed and if you go right here you can get links to many many free tools and websites that will help you build your new business.
How To Sell Your Ad Agency: A link to my blog posts on selling your agency.
Take my Corleone Offer and call me up. It’s an offer you should not refuse and a faster path to —– how to make the cash to get to What’s Next.
Woody Allen’s Ultimate Happy EndingIn 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)
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.
I just got off the phone with an account director at a humongous WPP agency that was telling me about his six years in the advertising business and his current ‘woe is me story’ (I love this definition: “ironical or humorous exclamation of sorrow or distress.”) My advice? Hey, many architects, dentists, dry cleaners and, yes, even lawyers get very antsy at the six-year mark, so consider taking a year off and go to SE Asia. He’s 30 and single so just do it.
The conversation got me thinking about exit strategies. We are well past the days when people hung in there to get a gold watch for 50 years of dedicated work and people age out of advertising at 43 these days (high salaries? don’t know how to market to millennials? haven’t figured out that Periscope is so much more effective than Tv advertising?) So, if you want… go to the greener pastures. They are out there and some come with great food… see the video below.
More:
Need some help getting to Thailand? Like spice? Watch this crazy video.
I didn’t until I listened to what I think is one of the most entertaining and informative podcasts from Tim Ferris and his 4-Hour Workweek podcast:
The Tattooed Heretic of Wine and Whiskey, Richard Betts.
By the way, its whiskey in countries with an “e” in their name like the U.S.A. And in Japan and Scotland it’s Whisky. If this isn’t important to you, I suggest you bail on the rest of this blog post. Go ahead, drink more vodka.
You work in advertising which means that according to recent research you are 67% more likely to drink more wine and whiskey than the average U.S. consumer. What’s more… there is a need to know things about booze because you drink it with friends and the occasional client. Hopefully, an AOR client.
The super entertaining interview is… C/O Tim Ferris… (You’ve read his books, right?) [Read more…] about 4 Hour Workweek On Whisky Or Whiskey