Insights

The Big Advertising Agency Resource List

January 30, 2021 By Peter 24 Comments

Advertising Agency Resource List – Updated Often

My advertising agency resource list is curated to help advertising, digital, design, and PR agencies easily find the inspiration and industry resources that will help y’all build killer agencies and careers.

If I were you, I’d grab a glass of Larkmead Cabernet Sauvignon 2016 and check out all of these links. I guarantee that at least one of these websites will help you or your team grow your agency. Therefore my friends, share this page with your friends, family, and staff.

I wish I had this advertising resource when I was in the ad biz. All I had was my brain. – David Ogilvy

OK, one more. This here Peter Levitan blog has over 800 posts dedicated to helping your marketing communications company grow. I hope that my insights on the art and science of agency business development, growth and management help you to make more bucks. Speaking of resources, take me up on my Corleone offer.

A Couple Of Quickies:

Need A Headline That Grabs?

The Portent Content Idea Generator. Yes, it is a bit crazy. But, it does stimulate the mind looking for a click-bait headline for your blog, Instagram thing, or whatever. Put in “advertising“. Then laugh.

Website Speed Is Good.

Google PageSpeed Insights. Do you know how fast your website download speed is and how its performance ranks against your competitive agencies? Here’s the drill. If your site takes too long to download, it will lose some traffic.

Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test. Here’s another very important test. If you are like me, over 20% of your website visitors are looking at you on a mobile device then you better make sure that they are digging how fast your website loads.

BROWSEO.We might be getting a bit geeky here. That said, BROWSEO helps you view any web page like search engines see it. The tool helps you to identify issues with your site and with your current and future clients’ websites.

And, To help Your Thought Leadership Program: What Are People Searching For?

AnswerThePublic. This is a free visual tool that shows you what questions and queries your consumers have by getting a free report of what they’re searching for at Google.

Exploding Topics. Yes, just like it sounds.

Google Trends. Chances are good that you are aware of Google Trends. This a powerful tool to help you know what is hot and what is not on Google’s search universe. A look at the top 2019 Google searches may or may not make you a fan of humanity.

Social Mention. Ever wonder what the world is saying about you or your company? Here you go.

The Advertising Agency Resource List…

Advertising Agency News Sites

Ad Agency Directories

Top Advertising Blogs

Favorite Social Media Tools

Video Marketing Tools & Information

Creative Inspiration & Idea Generation

Creative Space & Time

Online Advertising Education

Online Legal Resources

Life After Advertising & How To Make $$$

Top Ten Twitter Tools

Top Advertising And Design Awards

Marketing & Advertising Podcast

Marketing Tool Generators

Advertising Agency News Resources

The Ratti Report. Your agency needs fresh business development leads, right? So check out this website for a daily list of business development opportunities. News you can use to buy that new Tesla Roadster.
Advertising Age. Ad Age delivers the latest news from the world of advertising and marketing agencies.
Ad Asia Online. AdAsia Online focuses on automation, advertising technology, and creative technology,
AdNews. Australia’s advertising, marketing, and media industries news resource.
Adweek. Adweek covers media news, including print, technology, plus.
branding in asia. Need to know what’s up in the Asian marketing and advertising world? Sure you do. Check out this comprehensive resource for creative work, news, interviews, and insights. Read it and you just might take the next non-stop to Singapore.
Business Insider. Business Insider’s daily take on the ad industry.
Campaign Asia. Campaign Asia reports on advertising and emerging media in the Asia Pacific region.
Campaign Magazine. Ad industry news from the UK’s advertising industry “bible”.
Communication Arts. Print publication offering competitions, forums, feature articles, job bank, graphic design resources and online shopping.
Creative. The magazine of promotion and marketing.
Digiday. Digiday creates content, services, and community that foster change in media and marketing.
Direct Marketing News. Provides news, feature articles, columns, and special reports on direct marketing.
The Drum. The alternative to Campaign. Delivers lots of news and views.
MediaPost. Comprehensive advertising and media industry coverage.
TechCrunch. Keep up (or try to keep up) with the fast-paced world of startups and VC’s.

Ad Agency Directories

A List Of The Best Advertising Podcasts

January 28, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

The average podcast listener listens to about 5 to 6 hours of podcasts per week. Since there are zillions of podcasts and episodes, one wonders how to get enough ear and brain time to find the most useful. To help y’all a bit, here’s a manageable, I stress manageable, list of the best advertising podcasts. I have to admit that this is a shifting list and, not every show from every advertising podcast is wonderful.

Help: If you think I should add to the list, please send me your besties = peter@peterlevitan.com

Also, stay tuned for my thinking on why an advertising agency should NOT podcast.

My list of the best advertising podcasts includes a good starter episode, a single episode that I think will be worth your time.

Advertising Magazine Podcasts

Campaign Podcast

Host: Omar Oakes (As usual, the British sound smart)

Welcome to the Campaign podcast, our weekly look at the biggest stories and trends in the world of advertising, marketing, media and technology, as well as our latest videos.

Good Start: Campaign’s most listened to podcasts of 2020

Adweek’s Yeah, That’s Probably An Ad

Multiple Hosts. My favorite is Doug Zanger.

Good Start: What’s next? Adweek’s 2021 Outlook for Media, Marketing and Tech

AdAge Ad Lib Podcast

Multiple Hosts

Good Start: The State Of The CMO

Australia / Asia / India

Not seeing much podcast activity at the advertising pub level in Australia / Asia and India. Am I missing something. Or, do have these guys figured out that ad podcasting is not worth the effort?

Digital Marketing Podcasts

Marketing School

Hosts: Neil Patel and Eric Sui

Good Start: Just start.

These smart guys do an episode a day. The shows last approximately 4 minutes. They bam into and out of single subjects including SEO, new stuff like Clubhouse, and email marketing. I wake up to them. I’d say that 1/2 of their podcasts teach me something digital.

Social Media Marketing

Host: Michael Stelzner of Social Media Examiner

Good Start: LinkedIn Ad Retargeting

Michael has been a primary guide in the digital marketing universe for eons. He interviews the best.

The Social Media Marketing podcast—a top marketing podcast—is a weekly 45-minute show hosted by our founder, Michael Seltzer. With millions of downloads each year, this show has been helping marketers for more than eight years.

Smart Marketing Guys

six pixels of separation

Host: Mitch Joel

Good Start: Ann Janzer on how to write your own non-fiction book.

2nd Good Start: The Relevance of Marketing Agencies With Peter Levitan [Read more…] about A List Of The Best Advertising Podcasts

Just Write An Advertising Book, Please

January 21, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

That’s Right… Write An Advertising Book.

I want you to write an advertising book. For your personal brand and your agency’s branding. And to help y’all become unignorable. How so?

I have spoken at big conferences (as in how to write a book at Hubspot – plus remember to take off the lanyard thing), been interviewed on lots of podcasts, occasionally make it into an ADWEEK article. Why? Because I wrote this book. Books beget authority. Proof that you actually give a shit, know something, and can actually write.

That said, the biggest benefit…? The book has generated business leads that have resulted in thousands in business $ for my ad agency consultancy.

Between direct business, I also make moolah from Amazon – well, a tiny bit but it paid for the book itself. Here is an email I just got from Amazon.

This royalty payment notification is for Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) sales recorded in the Kindle Store. Payment will be made to your bank account and should appear in your available balance within 2 to 5 business days after the Payment Date. Details of the payment will be available on the Payment Report.

More Books?

Yup. I also wrote “Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide” and two photo books, Potlandia and Jointlandia on the early days of the cannabis industry. That’s one of the photos of a 2013 product above. From the days before big business and package designers got involved.

And, I am updating my thinking about how to build the world’s best sales presentation & pitch by writing about the ‘good, bad, and ugly’ in the world of virtual meetings. Oh, and a book about how to be a great agency account manager.

Frankly, not enough advertising agencies write an advertising book. Even a digital agency deep into data can write a book. This does not have to be hard, or big, or long. Just look at what Austin Kleon did with the writing and design o “Steal Like An Artist.”

Need ideas for a book and how to use it for business development? Give me a shout.

A Funny Advertising Agency Lawyer Story

January 19, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

Yes, The Often Dreaded Three Words “Advertising Agency Lawyer” Can Be Funny

I was speaking with an advertising agency client this morning and she told me that they just got off a call with their advertising agency lawyer and it appears that the agency, for competitive reasons, has to rename one of their in-house developed tech applications. It is an important app for their clients and it also represents real smart intellectual property for the agency. OK, this stuff happens. Plus, it reminded me of a funny conversation I had about trademark infringement.

Citrus Vs. Citrus + The Advertising Agency Lawyer

About fifteen years ago my Ralston360 Portland advertising agency bought the graphic design firm Citrus. We liked their name so much we took it as our own. Citrus the advertising agency was born.

I sold Citrus the agency in 2014. A couple of weeks after the deal closed, a close where the name Citrus was dissolved, I am sitting in my room at L.A.’s The Standard Hotel and I check my voice mail. An unknown lawyer says that I have to call him immediately about a serious company issue. So, I give him a call. [Read more…] about A Funny Advertising Agency Lawyer Story

My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi

January 1, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

2020 In India

Namaste. I’ll get personal to start 2021.

Exactly 366 days ago I got on a 15-hour flight from Toronto to New Delhi. I was embarking on a 31-day trip that I had planned for at least 6 months after dreaming of India for years. I had initially thought that I was going to be traveling with my daughter and her husband. However, when our family was together at their home in Buenos Aires in October 2020 Mackenzie announced that she was pregnant. There went the family trip. I was now on my own.

I’d have to say that other than the birth of my granddaughter in June, that India was the highlight of 2020. I traveled from Delhi to a wedding in Jaipur to Udaipur’s lakes; Pushkar (where I did not think that sharing the often proffered marijuana milkshake was a good idea); mind-blowing holy Varanasi to the great crazy city of Mumbai and then back to Delhi. Because I had a plan to bring my ‘The People’ ethnographic photography series to India, I never felt like a pure tourist.

The highlights of my trip were the Jaipur wedding with my friends Nikhil Pandit and his wife (Nikhil has a highly recommended touring company); magnificent Udaipur (where on a lake boat I listened to the 4-year old girl behind me gently sing, Row Row Your Boat; Varanasi (I stayed wide-eyed in a hotel on the Ganges + the photo above is from one of the ghats) and cosmopolitan, and way complex Mumbai where my intro dinner with Satish Krishnamurthy of Sideways Consulting was like hanging out with an old friend.

Plus the highlight of highlights was my being invited to speak to college students at Mumbai’s ISDI School Of Communication and Delhi’s Sharda University.

Oh, oh, and eating everything on the streets. Everything. [Read more…] about My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi