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Pitching

Advertising Pitch Book Update

Peter · February 7, 2014 · Leave a Comment

baseball_2-1969pxA couple of people have asked why I’ve slowed down my blogging. Like most of you, I’ll take any chance to slay this insatiable beast.

OK, what’s up? I’ve been putting my typing into writing the world’s greatest, smartest, must have book on agency pitching. Here is where things stand.

Working title:

Perfect Pitch

What is it: A real old-fashioned paperback book printed with ink and paper and eBook detailing the best practices for designing, writing and presenting new business pitches. It leverages my 30 years of participating in and leading new business pitches… and some deep seated attitude. It will also include my story of the world’s worst agency pitch for the global Adidas account when I was at Saatchi & Saatchi London. I’ll support the book with an active website that will include agency leader insights and tools that every agency can use to better mange their pitch development.

Reason for being: According to advertising agency staff, the process of creating a new business pitch sucks. Read my post, “Half Of Advertising Agency Staff Hates Pitching.” I think that poor pitch management dramatically reduces an agency’s odds of winning. (This is a “duh” right?)

Status: I’ve written about 27,000 words. Will add another 7,000. I’ll also include interviews with experts like agency search consultants, procurement experts, a lawyer on IP and one of the best creators of 3D leave behinds. I’ve started designing the book and its website.

Stay tuned. I hope to publish this spring.

 

Steve Jobs + Nancy Duarte = How To Present

Peter · January 17, 2014 · Leave a Comment

Steve Jobs Dissected

AAPLNancy Duarte’s book on presenting, “resonate – Present visual Stories That Transform Audiences” has been my go-to book on how to create powerful presentations for the past four years. It’s a serious, almost scientific look at the art of presentation. In fact, it is science.

Nancy uses a graphical tracking system called sparklines to visually track a presentation’s flow and major points. Here is Nancy’s TEDx talk on presentations which includes her sparklines deconstruction (it starts at 8:45) of Steve Jobs and his art of presentation. Watch it. It will help your agency win more business.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfQF3DXG-S4#t=541

For more on Jobs and how he can help you give better presentations head over here: Steve Jobs “Secret” Advertising Agency New Business Presentation Tips

FYI:

I interviewed Nancy about her presentation prescriptions for my book… “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.” Nancy is just one of a range of experts interviewed that will help make you a better pitch person – and win more business. Amazon and I would like you to buy it. 

Advertising Pitch Planning: Tame The Meeting Beast

Peter · January 13, 2014 · Leave a Comment

images wildPoorly managed advertising, design and PR agency meetings waste time, kill creativity and cost money. This is a particularly nasty problem in the over-heated world of agency new business pitches.

We know from a recent research study of advertising professionals by Provoke Insights that agency employees are dissatisfied with the agency pitch process.

 “Approximately half (47% of respondents) of advertising professionals surveyed by Provoke Insights say they are dissatisfied with the current internal approach to pitching.”

As a long time agency new business professional, I know that one of the worst “approach” offenders is the poorly managed pitch planning meeting. Worse, poorly managed pitch meetings could lead to losing the pitch itself by making the entire development process less efficient.

The Pitch Leader Must Lead

If you are the  pitch team leader your job is to manage the pitch process so the agency will deliver the best response it can. I’ve always believed that meeting management is the first place to start.

Meeting Management Ala Northwest Airlines

In 1986 I moved from Dancer Fitzgerald Sample’s New York office to Minneapolis  to manage our Northwest Airlines account. I was invited into the client’s inner circle and attended their senior management meetings as the advertising agency representative. These were the good old days when the agency’s opinion on marketing was considered critical to the client’s success.

I quickly realized that Northwest had a serious meeting problem. Most of my clients seemed to be in non-stop meetings from 8AM to 6PM. I couldn’t figure out when they had time to think let alone get their jobs done. This fact wasn’t lost on the CEO who hired a management consultant to help create an efficient and effective meeting culture. It was instructive to watch this course correction help Northwest to be the fastest growing airline in the late 1980’s.

Effective, well-managed meetings deliver three key benefits:

  1. Effective meetings achieve the meeting’s objective.
  2. They take up a minimum amount of time.
  3. They leave participants feeling that a sensible process has been followed.

Meeting Rules

Here are the 10 rules I picked up at Northwest.

  1. Every meeting must have a leader to run the meeting and manage the process.
  2. Invite only the people that need to be in the meeting. This isn’t a numbers game. It is OK for some people to be working at their desks until they are really needed.
  3. Make sure that everyone understands that they are required to show up on time and if they are late they will be costing the agency time and money. Keeping colleagues waiting is rude and costly. Do the math.
  4. Have a clear agenda with meeting objectives. Share it at the start.
  5. Have a timetable. Make sure that anyone needed in the meeting knows of the start and stop time. You should try not to have any open-ended meetings. This is critical.
  6. Consider banning mobile phones. It may be hard to believe that there was once a time when we managed to live our lives without being constantly tethered to our smart phones.
  7. Once a meeting objective is met move on to the next one. Stay on topic.
  8. Watch the clock.
  9. End the meeting when you have covered the objectives.
  10. State any follow-up items, timing and individual responsibilities. Send out a meeting summary ASAP.

The Pitch

The pitch itself should be well stage-managed. These rules should be considered (I stress considered) in how you mange the actual client presentation. Clients will respect you when you show respect for their time and show that your agency is well-managed.

My Pitch

Call me. I’ll help you win more new business.

While you are at it… Don’t miss any of my brilliant (LOL, but I mean it) thoughts on new business.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter.

10 New Year’s Resolutions For Advertising Agencies

Peter · January 4, 2014 · Leave a Comment

babyNew Year’s resolutions work. Well, at least some do. The bottom line: at least give them a chance.

Here are ten 2014 resolutions for advertising agencies that I think your agency should make. I mean… really do if you want to grow your advertising agency and your bottom line.

1. We will strive to create an agency brand position or business model that stands out from our competition. This will be designed to give prospective clients a compelling reason to want to work with us. Let me help you out here.

2. We will write and execute an annual business development plan that uses both inbound and outbound marketing. In fact, we will start by updating our master business plan. Too much has changed in the past twelve months to not revisit all of our assumptions and objectives.

3. We will manage and run our business development program with consistency. We will not start and stop. It is too late to restart a new business program after loosing a large client.

4. We will not pitch every account that comes our way. The pitch process is simply too costly. Before we pitch any account we will work hard to determine if the prospective client is a good fit for the agency based on a set of predetermined criteria. Here is a start. Is the client famous? Do they respect marketing? Do they want us to do brilliant work? Will they pay well? Are they a cultural fit? Hopefully you can say yes to two or three of these.

5. We will establish a recommended agency compensation plan and will share this with current and perspective clients. This plan will include cost-plus, fixed fees and performance-based remuneration based on a client’s performance metrics and an annual agency review. I’d like to se agencies get out in front of this issue.

6. We will ensure that we provide more value to all existing clients than we did in 2013. We will make sure we know how to prove our value.

7. We will give our people the time to fully explore the marketing value of new media or communications technologies. Some savvy agencies jumped on Vine when it was introduced and used it to build agency awareness.

8. We will work to grow our expertise in mobile and video marketing, the two fastest growing segments. To not do this will kill us.

9. We will write the book we want to read. I stole this line from Austin Kleon’s “Steal Like An Artist.” I wrote about why advertising agencies like The Gate Worldwide write books to grow their awareness for the blog Agency Post.

10. Have Big Hairy Audacious Goals. Go for it this year. I firmly believe that without BHAG’s agencies will wither away.

-> Here’s a bonus resolution:

We will call Peter Levitan and take him up on his Vito Corleone offer. We have nothing to lose and so much to gain from his new business insights. No, I don’t think that humility is a business-building attribute.

While you are at it… Don’t miss any of my brilliant (LOL, but I mean it) thoughts on new business.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter.

 

 

 

 

 

Half of Advertising Agency Staff Hates Pitching

Peter · December 15, 2013 · Leave a Comment

frownAn Advertising Agency Staff That Hates Pitching Isn’t A Good Thing

A 2013 study by the research firm Provoke Insights confirmed what we all know. The advertising agency new business pitching process can be debilitating.

From Provoke:

“… approximately half (47%) of advertising professionals surveyed by Provoke Insights say they are dissatisfied with the current internal approach to pitching.

47%. Ok, pitching is intense. So, what else is new? Pitching is also intense for architects, nuclear power plant designers and fighter jets salespeople. Writing, presenting and winning (or losing) pitches is intense.

It can also be exhilarating (more on that a bit later.)

Other findings on pitching:

Issues include: “unrealistic timelines” say 66% of respondents / “long work hours” say 65%

And, because Provoke is a research company who paid for the research, we get this nod towards having insightful insights:

“Forty-four percent of advertising professionals stated that if there were better availability of research and data, pitches would run smoother and (be) more successful.”

Here’s more on what resources agencies say they need to kill it:

support_need_to_pitch

 

By the way, I posted about how to use free, smart internet based tools to create insights here: 13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business.

Back to exhilarating.

  • Pitches are a major way agencies win new business. Ya gotta be in the game. Maybe Droga5 can get away without pitching.
  • Pitches make sense if they make sense. Don’t pitch just any account just for the sake of pitching.
  • Pitches are team sports and, importantly, build team spirit.
  • Pitches help agency staff stand out and be stars. Especially important in larger agencies.
  • Pitches are fun to run if you know what you are doing and have a solid plan.
  • Pitches, winning pitches that is, can make the agency happy and richer. A good thing.
  • Pitches hone agency thinking; highlight skills and help agencies think about what the agency actually has to offer or needs to build for the future. I think that the benefit of forced introspection is underrated.

The full report can be read on AdRants.

I’ve tried to make the art and science of pitching more successful and even fun. Just read my book. Look up top to learn more and make that all important purchase that will lead to more — wins.

 

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