Insights
Today’s Marketing Headache
Need a marketing headache? Well, according to Gartner you should already have one. Check out this chart that makes it all look like a train wreck ready to happen. That’s the bad news.
The good is that savvy advertising agencies should be able to use this level of complexity to offer aspirin-like services.
My First Time. It Was Sweet.
I won my first pitch in February 1984 — so, this is my 30th anniversary of pitching and winning.
In 1984 I was an account executive at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, New York’s largest “Mad Men” era advertising agency and I used this pitch to gain senior management awareness and a promotion to account supervisor. Dancer also known as DFS, an agency you might not know about, had some small clients like P&G, General Mills, Toyota, Sara Lee, Nabisco, Wrangler and HP. (Saatchi & Saatchi bought Dancer in 1987.)
The pitch was for Western Union’s EasyLink service. EasyLink was the first commercial email service and launched the same year as the IBM PC. We won the $15 million AOR pitch and in the process I learned how a well-oiled pitch worked from a new business team that won nine out of ten pitches that year. One of the reasons we won the Western Union account was our repositioning of electronic mail (yes, that’s what it was called back then) as Instant Mail. DFS was very keen on selling the benefit.
So, just to go back to 1984 for a second. I was three years into my advertising career, I got promoted, I was working at New York’s hottest agency. I was working on one of the earliest internet technology accounts (a reason that I eventually left advertising to launch two Internet startups) and I learned how the Internet was going to transform the world of communications.
Here is how the New York Times reported on the win. get this. There were about 40,000 email users back then. Today? For 2014, Radicati Group projects 2.5 billion email users worldwide.
Advertising Pitch Book Update
A 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.
If I Were An Ad Agency Client – I’d Hire Lean Mean Fighting Machine
I look at lots of ad agency websites. I put them in my agency directory / I look at them because agencies contact me to ask for my help (its amazing how fast you can suss out an agency’s value – like in 7 seconds) and I look at them as if I were a client seeking a new marketing partner.
Most agency websites fail. They are me-too, slow to deliver a message, overloaded, have no personality and don’t sell anything. They are, sadly, 20 years or so after the birth of the graphical browser, dull and oh so boring brochures. So, its so sweet when one comes across an agency that gets it. And, of course, once again, its the English that have it all figured out.
In this case, its the, of course, lean website from London’s Lean Mean Fighting Machine. Spend time on this website: watch the videos, enjoy the attitude like how they position their blog (“Our Blog: By Employees That Are Forced To Write it”.)
Please. Make adjustments to your website. Be different, have fun. Oh, and think sales because, at the end of the very long day, your website should sell (and, if you can, look different that the guy down the street.)
Finally, a sense of humor will go a long way to pre sell. Most clients say that “chemistry” is how they choose an agency.