Smart Agencies

How To Make Thought Leadership Easy

Peter · June 22, 2016 · 1 Comment

Easier Thought Leadership

Yes, that’s Seth Godin to your left. He has been a master thought leader since the mid-1990’s. He has made a lot of money doing that by being opinionated, smart, a prolific writer and global speaker. A serious thought leader. You can do it (well a form of it) too. Here’s a how-to to get this important job done faster.

Let’s start with a definition for thought leadership from Wikipedia (of course.)

A thought leader can refer to an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded.

Let’s unpack this:

“A thought leader can refer to an individual or firm that is recognized as an authority in a specialized field…” Two obvious points; It is good to be 1) recognized as an authority (as in known for your gray matter and insights vs. being invisible) and 2) it is good for your personal or company brand to be specialized vs. a generalist in today’s fragmented marketing environment.

“…and whose expertise is sought and often rewarded.” Another obvious point, it is good to be sought after and rewarded.

If thought leadership can actually deliver “recognition” and “rewards” for you and your agency… then do it.

This is about getting your unignorable on (read this post about how to do that.)

Not So Easy…

But, the hard part is getting thought leadership done at your very busy company. I’ve seen this up close at many agencies. Too many, given how y’all can get the job done without too much pain, time and money. Read on. [Read more…] about How To Make Thought Leadership Easy

How NOT To Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

Peter · June 10, 2016 · Leave a Comment

How Not To Win While Losing

A friend in advertising sent me the following email. I’ll follow it with some thoughts. I removed names to protect the innocent (actually, not so innocent).

“I read your long blog post, “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program“. Every sentence is worthwhile.

I did new business at Big NYC and Big L.A. agencies, and then at BlahBlah/SF, where it was my sole responsibility for 3 years. The biggest thing I noticed at BlahBlah was that they lost their biggest client every year. If they had shut down the new business operation and had me, or someone like me, be the client retention and client delight manager, the agency would’ve doubled in size just by not losing the biggest account.

What a piece of insight! But, being digital geeks, the principals didn’t like to leave their desks, screenss and their HQ meetings. Instead of wandering the halls of their biggest clients, cementing the relationship and pulling in even more business, they stayed in the office talking about getting new clients, which, as we know, is a low-odds practice.”

My Unpack

Business Development Is A Must Do

I tell all of my agency clients that they must have a business development plan that runs 24/7 because they will lose large clients every year. This inevitable loss has accelerated over the past few years because an ever increasing number of client assignments are now ‘projects.’ Larger, longer Agency Of Record accounts are becoming scarce. Is the need for a BD plan a secret? No. But, half of all agencies don’t have a sustained sales effort that will replace those lost clients.

Grow Your Current Clients

The Unignorable Advertising Agency

Peter · May 23, 2016 · 1 Comment

The Unignorable Advertising Agency Wins New Clients

There are lots of ways to win a new account for your advertising agency. You get a referral (the default for many agencies); you have unique expertise (let’s say e-commerce); you are known as a specialist in a category or geography; you have a kick-ass thought leadership program that gets read and passed along; you are an SEO genius and are listed on page one for your Google keywords.

I’ll show you one more approach below.

An Unignorable List

But first, here’s a list of ways to avoid getting a prospective client’s positive attention. Even worse, some profound ways for you to be very very ignored.

Send them a one-off copy-heavy email and hope they respond.
Send them a series of emails about how wonderful your agency is (not them or their issues), and then hope they respond.
Find other special ways to bug the hell out of them. Multiple voicemail messages anyone?
Ensure that your agency sounds exactly like the other agencies trying to get the client’s attention. Here’s a list of me-too advertising agency positionings. Where are you on this list?
Make sure your agency’s website looks just like your competitor’s website. Similar jargon? WordPress templates, anyone?
Hope that the prospects will go on and on to find your position on Google that’s on page 4 of the listings for your competitive agency set.
Start, stop, start, stop, start your inbound and outbound business development program.
Make new business an “oh, we’ll get to that” proposition.

And on and on. I’ll stop so I won’t bore you. Or worse, scare you.

Maybe smarter… here is a way out.

Why Not Try Being Unignorably Creative?

Clients are smart. Clients get social media. Clients can produce their own content these days. Clients understand marketing (sort of). Even worse, many clients think they can bring all of that in-house.

But what they can’t do is be unignorably creative thinkers. Just can’t do that. Not in their DNA. Nope. But it’s in yours, and it is a major reason for your existence (unless you are just data marketing or apps geeks, etc.) and, if used intelligently — your creative secret sauce.

One of the ways that the leading (and famous) agencies get incoming new business inquiries is by being ‘unignorable‘ and you know the usual agency suspects because you hear about them every award season and read about them in AD AGE. The thing is that you know how to be famous too. Many in our industry are chasing technology when they should be chasing and proving their creativity. In the advertising industry, creativity breeds fame.

Chase Unignorable – Canada Style [Read more…] about The Unignorable Advertising Agency

Watch This Amazing Steve Jobs Talk On Advertising

Peter · May 9, 2016 · 3 Comments

I Thought That I Was Way Tired Of Steve Jobs And The Glory Days Of Apple Advertising

But…

I took a re-look at Apple’s 1997 Think Different TV commercial. You’ve seen it. Watch it again, please. Ads like this are why experienced advertising people from the olden days can (I stress “can”) get real sick about how the advertising industry spends more time thinking about content, programmatic buying, ads that follow you around for the rest of your freakin online life, how to squeeze ads that you don’t want on your phone and how to create brilliant Facebook ads. Oh, and lame click bait headlines like my, “Watch This Amazing Steve Jobs Talk On Advertising”.

OK, stuff it Peter. We’ve heard all of this before.

Just watch the commercial – again. Here’s a line from the spot… (And, then, more importantly, watch the next video.)

“Because the people who care enough about changing the world are the ones that do.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nmwXdGm89Tk

OK, BUT!

I’ll stop. But, not till you see this internal Apple meeting where Jobs discusses his vision for the company and introduces the ‘”new” Apple (after he returned from exile) and the new :60 Think Different TV spot. Job’s says the new TV commercial is:

“It’s about what we are. It touches the soul of the company.”

I admit it. I can’t control myself: When was the last time your client said that about your advertising? I know 1997 Jobs and Apple doesn’t represent our everyday advertising world reality and your client isn’t Steve Jobs.

But… please start to really want to have your clients get emotional when they see your ad ideas, not your invoice.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GMQhOm-Dqo

That’s it.

Oh, want your agency to Think Different? Call me. That’s what I do.