Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

Podcast

How To Be The Best Global Advertising Agency

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Want To Run A Global Advertising Agency Out Of Only One Office?

London Advertising, the crazily awarded global advertising agency (like being called the Agency Of The Year by The Drum year upon year) allowed its CEO Michael Moszynski to be interviewed by me right here on Advertising Stories. It helps that we worked together while having a few pints at Saatchi London in the way back. It also helps London Advertising that Michael’s Creative Director partner Alan Jarvie kicks butt as well.

Here are lessons on how to be distinctive; the value of the single-minded branded big idea; how to spend 25 years growing the massive Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group (and making it one of, if not the, most revered hospitality brands); how London advertises itself and how it kicks global / multi-office behemoths like WPP via one focussed office in London. Mantra = much more effective advertising for less. Not a bad sales pitch.

Really, there is not much more that I can say other than listen up. There are multiple teachable moments for any digital or “full service” advertising agency in this podcast. Pass it on to your mates.

NOTES:

London Advertising

Michael Mosynski on LinkedIn

The Mandarin Oriental “I’m A Fan” Advertising Campaign

Hypnotism coming: Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to…

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

Online Fraud and Malvertising

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Like Online Fraud? Then Send Us Your Credit Card, Password, and Social Security Numbers

online fraud Online fraud and malvertising are rampant.

Online fraud is when you get a request via a ‘trustworthy’ looking ad or message from a ‘trusted’ company that asks you to deliver your personal information. Most of us are smart enough to not give away our personal info. But, millions do give it away every day. Hear clean.io’s CEO Matt Gillis, the online fraud and malvertising expert, on this crazy world that siphons millions from our pockets every day.

clean.io in their words is… “Dedicated to Putting an End to Malicious Code. clean.io safeguards the user experience and gives our clients peace of mind through world-class service and innovative products.”

Notes

clean.io

Matt Gillis on LinkedIn

YO – Hypnotism coming: Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to…

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

How To Build A Profitable Advertising Agency

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It Has Become More Difficult To Run A Profitable Advertising Agency – Here Is How To Do It

profitable advertising agencyThe marketing communications world started shifting in the 1990s when clients moved advertising agencies from a 15% commission basis to fees; from TV, radio, print, and outdoor to an ever-increasing number of digital media options; a couple of recessions and, well, I’ll stop here. I know this because I grew up in the heady high-profit days and sold my digital agency when it became more difficult to run a profitable advertising agency of any kind.

The Michael Farmer Interview… Michael has advised virtually all of the leading advertising agencies from WPP to Omnicom to you name it to help them grow profits by using smarter agency and staff management. Michael also wrote the book: “Madison Avenue Manslaughter: An inside view of fee-cutting clients, profit-hungry owners and declining ad agencies.” Sir Martin Sorrell wrote the forward.

Over the years, Farmer & Company, the acknowledged expert of Scope Of Work (SOW) management has worked with Ogilvy & Mather, Wonderman Thompson, VMLY&R, The Martin Agency, Saatchi & Saatchi, TBWA, and McKinney to name just a few.

A Bit Of The Interview.  From 360 Deliverables To 15,000.

The only true metric in an agency is the profit margin. That’s profit margin by client, which agencies have a hard time doing. And then profit margin for an office and then for a global client. In order to do that, they have to use timesheet data to figure out what their costs are. And everyone knows that the timesheet data is at least 30 to 40% incomplete. And they do not measure and document their scopes of work. When I worked with Ogilvy in the 1990s, they had 50 creatives and they were doing about 360 deliverables, 360 ads. It was all original work, TV, radio, and print. Even then it took us seven weeks to figure out how much work they were doing for each client today. I just did work with a similar office of 50 creatives. Today they are doing 15,000 deliverables for clients because of email marketing, social posting, Instagram, Facebook, you name it.

And, 90% of that work is adaptation work as opposed to origination work. The workload has exploded in volume and diminished in individual importance. Each little thing that they do is pretty small and doesn’t have a big impact on the brand. The agency and clients still don’t know how much of it is. I’ve worked with, Ogilvy, Gray, VMLY&R, BBD, you name it. I’ve worked with them all. I don’t know of a single holding company agency that has yet developed a methodology for measuring the amount of work they do so that they can better negotiate fees and resources with our clients.

Note, I think that this interview is so Important for any agency of any size that I will put the entire transcript in a separate post.

Profitable Advertising Agency Links

Madison Avenue Manslaughter – The Book.

Farmer & Company

Go here and sign up to get my free book, “How To Sell An Advertising Agency.”

YO – Hypnotism coming: Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember…

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

How To Sell Your Business

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So You Want To Sell Your Business? Start The Process Early.

Sell your businessI have bought and sold a few advertising, digital, and design businesses. The process is stressful and rewarding. The keys to success are knowing why you are selling (and buying), spending time to build value, building a compelling, market-leading positioning, getting your financials in order, and hiring the right experts that will help you sell your business.

That’s why I interviewed Mark Holdreith of Media Advisory Partners. Mark and his team specialize in delivering M&A services for small and mid-sized marketing services and media companies.

From Media Advisory Partners:

MAP was founded in 2010 to provide financial advisory services to small and mid-size marketing services, media, and related companies.  From the beginning, we have been committed to Advisory…providing the in-depth, end-to-end support and services required to meet your specific M&A needs.

I have two big pieces of advice; Start the process early. Read my free book, “How To Sell An Advertising Agency. And, How To Buy One.”  There are a couple of links on this page to make that real easy.

Media Advisory Partners

YO – Hypnotism coming: Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember…

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

How To Build An In House Agency

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in house agancyThe market vibration is that there is a growing use of the in house agency. To be more specific, this is an in house “advertising agency” since what is brought inside are one or more of what I’ll call “advertising services” that include strategy development; digital marketing; PR; ‘traditional advertising”; media planning, and buying and, most common, high-volume and fast-paced content development.

There are many reasons for a company to bring some or all marketing services inside by creating an in house agency. That said, there is no one size fits all and it ain’t easy folks.

The rather experienced Steven Morvay, he’s held senior positions as both an agency president at Saatchi & Saatchi Direct and senior marketing positions at Borders and HBO, gets both sides of the in house agency equation. Take a listen. This is a smart discussion. Yes, I said that.

The In House Agency – The Why Do It?

I am going to go deeper into the growth of the in house agency and its efficacy and issues. But for now, here is a revealing chart from the Association Of National Advertisers and eMarketer about the primary benefits of creating the in house agency. Yes, it is often mucho about saving some bucks.

in house agency

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Show Notes.

Steven Morvay on LinkedIn.

YO – Hypnotism coming.

Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe to Advertising Stories. Remember to subscribe.

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.