Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
I don’t have much to say to add to this commercial. Just watch it.
But I do want to point out that my very socially conscious friend Russ Stoddard, who runs Oliver Russell, one of the more serious purpose-driven marketing firms, pointed out that he thinks that charitable donations are up in the world of Covid-19. This message is inside of our Advertising Stories podcast. After you watch the Thai TV commercial, listen to the podcast. One of my best.
I council my advertising agency clients to advertise. I mean, actually use on and offline advertising to advertise the agency to increase awareness within the marketing universe, own their own story, and drive incoming leads.
Oh, and be UNIGNORABLE. A weirdly wonderful thing to do.
Today, LONDON Advertising, an uber-cool, massively award-winning and strategic major league agency, has done just that. These guys are ballsy and not your mother’s advertising agency.
The ad I am highlighting says, “How many advertising agencies can you name? Well, now you can name one more.”
A bit more about LONDON – note how focussed their positioning is:
LONDON Advertising is a global agency with just one office. It was set up in 2008 (two weeks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers) to disrupt the traditional network agency model. Since then it has worked with clients based on every continent and run campaigns in more countries than WPP has offices. The agency’s iconic “I’m a fan” campaign for Hong Kong-based Mandarin Oriental has proven to achieve the highest ad recall ever recorded by Ipsos Mori.
LONDON Advertising has been voted Agency of the Year for six out of the last seven years.
Agencies have historically told their clients to advertise into the headwinds of a recession. Reasons include hold your share or voice; increase your share of voice; be one of the winners while your competitors hunker down; make sure your brands don’t die a slow death. You get this picture. Well here is an agency putting their money where their mouth is. A rarity even in the good days.
I am going to let the LONDON Advertising press release speak for itself.
Ad agencies often tell their clients, brands that advertise in a downturn increase market share.
However, few agencies take their own advice.
LONDON Advertising is taking its own advice and is today launching a major campaign with
10 TV ads, starring Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson, on 9,000 spots on Sky News.
The TV is supported by super-premium digital posters across Ocean Outdoor’s UK portfolio and Linked-in. The campaign is running from 6th July to 2nd August and will reach 30 million people.
Michael Moszynski, Founder and CEO, said:
“Our campaign, launching on the first working day after the easing of Lockdown, is a call to arms to all businesses to get Britain going again. We believe in ‘by example shalt thou lead’ and that we all have a duty to help rebuild our economy.”
‘Advertising Legend’ Rupert Howell (Founder HHCL, MD ITV) commented:
“This is the first time I have seen an ad agency do a major campaign like this for itself.
The ads are bloody brilliant!”.
The agency’s Founder and Creative Director, Alan Jarvie, explains the rationale:
“It is a fact advertising builds brands and fame. We believe the current situation provides a rare opportunity. Audiences are currently higher than normal and media is cheaper, as many companies have cancelled their campaigns. So, we’re doing what we would advise our clients to do; advertise now.
Our campaign demonstrates the three criteria we believe work must satisfy to be effective: Is it simple? Does it stand out? Can you remember who it’s for? A lot of advertising fails to do one, two or all three of these things.
We also wanted to show it’s the size of your idea that matters, not the size of your production budget. We would like to thank Dame Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson, OBE, for making themselves available to take part in the campaign.”
Videos of all 10 TV ads featuring Helen Mirren and Liam Neeson can be downloaded here
Hi-res image of the poster ads can be downloaded here
If you are a serious client… contact: michael@LONDONadvertising.com +44 7968 063 155
The interview below was done in 2014. It remains 100% right on.
Some updated thinking. I am asked on a high-frequency basis by agency management, that means CEO types, if their advertising agency should have a business development director. Because of this question, I thought I’d update this evergreen interview with Brooks Gilley who knows what’s up.
My current thinking based on talking with many agencies is that, at best, only 50% of advertising agency business development directors succeed. I am about to do some haranguing. Why?
Give me a shout if you want to discuss your agency and its specifics.
To quote the Beach Boys… Wouldn’t It Be Nice. Yes, wouldn’t it be nice to have a business development director that brought in more business for your advertising agency than you can handle? But is your business development director doomed from the start?
She or he could be if you do not have agency objectives, a competitive agency brand positioning, something to sell beyond, “Hey we are a full-service/digital/social media agency”. Or, not having a list of clients and categories you want to nail; an active up-to-date CRM system or you are now in a state of panic because you just lost your largest client.
I know that this is a tough job to fill and do. I managed my agency’s business development director at my own ad agency; for Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising in New York and London and as CEO at two Internet start-ups. I have hired ten business development directors over the past twenty years. Some worked out and some, well, not so well. Again, this is one of, if not the toughest, agency jobs to position for success.
But, don’t take my word for it. Before you read on for an expert interview, you might also want to go to my blog post on how to pay an agency business development director.
Brooks Gilley is the Founder and CEO of Portland’s 52 Limited. 52 LTD is a 15-year-old creative resource company that connects world-class talent with leading brands, marketing departments, design firms, advertising and digital agencies.
In addition to running one of the west coast’s leading creative talent agencies, Brooks ran the Portland Advertising Federation and worked at advertising agencies.
Brooks: It’s not surprising at all, largely for the fact that agencies I have worked with on business development director searches come to us in a moment of panic, and that’s usually where the ask starts. It’s a role that is needed now but was probably needed at least twelve months before new business gains became an issue. Additionally, it’s not necessarily a strategic role that is esteemed at and supported within a ‘creative’ organization. [Read more…] about Is Your Advertising Agency Business Development Director Doomed?
The big question… Should an advertising agency create and publish a podcast – now, in 2020? Read this before you launch your new advertising agency podcast. I’ll try to get to the heart of the decision – using me as an example. Here are my first eleven episodes. I did these in a bit more than three weeks.
My first podcast series was launched in 2006. I was a bit early. Ya think? But, the podcast did support my advertising agency’s brand and helped us to market the agency. After all, it showed the world of prospective clients that we were ahead of the curve.
The podcast was The 360 View, the agency, at that time, Ralston360 (‘360’ = very 2006). I interviewed a range of people including an AOL exec; Rob Walsh the podcasting genius from Podcast 411 (now of Libsyn); a Saatchi & Saatchi president; a major agency search consultant and an ADWEEK editor on what was coming in digital marketing. I also included me just talking about marketing. The show was professionally produced. I’ll be adding a couple of the old audio shows to my new series. Nice to take a look back to what people were thinking in 2006.
Oh, I added the copy from a 2006 show on podcasting, the white paper version, at the bottom of this blog post. I admit it, a good history lesson.
Another podcast history lesson is for you to listen to my two 2006 interviews with podcasting world leader Rob Walch – now of the major podcasting publisher Libsyn. These interviews are informative and have insights that are relevant 24 years later.
Advertising Stories, my new podcast series launched three weeks ago. Go here to see what Advertising Stories will be talking about.
It is 2020 @home-style… No more “professional” production as I am recording myself by myself from my home office in my Mexican house. I am currently getting listed on all of the podcasting platforms (that takes up to two weeks) and I am recording a bunch of early series episodes so I launch with some bulk.
More on what it is and the launch later. However, my personal activity does bring up the question:
Should advertising agencies podcast? Which brings me to this…
Hmm, so, you want to know how to sell your advertising agency. Or, maybe buy one.Selling isn’t, of course, a unique thought, especially these days. Here is some background and learning from the why and how I sold my advertising agency – Citrus. I had a plan and it worked.
A few weeks ago, I was interviewed by Jake Jorgovan on his Working Without Pants podcast about selling an advertising agency. You can listen to Selling Your Advertising Agency here. I thought that I was particularly smart that day. And open about why and how I sold my own advertising agency. Note, I have bought and sold three agencies and have counseled a few agencies about how they should do the same.
… Oh, Quickie update. My new 58-page ebook on how to sell your advertising agency is coming out in August. its a freebie. Email me if you want to know when it hits.
Jake
Peter, for anyone in the audience who doesn’t know who you are and what it is that you do, can you just give us a quick overview about who you are and your background?
Peter
Sure. Today I am a business development consultant for advertising agencies. That’s today.
I started life as a commercial advertising and editorial photographer in San Francisco, woke up one day and said, “I really don’t want to take photographs for other people.” I moved back to my hometown New York, started working at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, which was a very large Mad Men-type agency. Our client list was bizarre, everything from General Mills to Proctor & Gamble, to Toyota and Nabisco. That agency was bought by Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide.
I spent 16 years at Dancer and Saatchi. I worked in New York. I opened and ran the office in Minneapolis. I moved to London and worked across Europe. I ran business development in London and New York. When I came back to New York in ’94 I discovered the internet and went to work for the company that owns Conde Nast putting newspapers online. Did that for a few years, started another company called Active Buddy, which is similar in some ways to Siri as in understanding natural language. The platform was instant messaging. We were going to sell the company to Google, or Yahoo, or Microsoft. I would have had FU money. That didn’t happen, but I did get a good chunk when we sold the technology to Microsoft.
For some reason after the dot com bust, I woke up and said, “It’s time to move the family to Oregon,” and I bought an advertising agency out there called Ralston Group. We renamed it when we bought the design firm Citrus and added a couple of Nike AOR accounts. A few years later I woke up again and I said, “It’s time to sell the agency.” I could discuss the why and how’s in selling an agency if you want. I sold the agency. I now do three things in Mexico, one of which is to consult with advertising agencies around the world.
Jake
Nice, that is an awesome and absolutely incredible story. And your headline on your website is very valid when I say, “I’m the most experienced advertising business development consultant.” As you clearly have got some years and track record in this and have done a ton of stuff with the big names. You’ve run your own agency. You’ve kind of been all around the field of things.
First of all, what was the why for you selling your agency? Why did you decide to do that versus continuing to run it like it is? Let’s start there because that a question I’m definitely curious about, and I know a lot of agency owners sometimes think about it.
Peter
Well, the why, I think it’s important to understand why you do anything. And at some point in the latter stages of owning the advertising agency, I ceased to have as much fun as I had had in the beginning. And a real catalyst for that was the 2007 – 2009 recession, which I think dramatically hurt the agency business in terms of profitability. Now let’s couple that with the growth of digital marketing where there are many, many new platforms to manage without commensurate billing, and I really lost a bit of love in the business when the business lost its level of profitability.
You have to remember that I started in the 15% commission days, and we were making bundles. I mean it was really a-go-go. There was a reason why there were mad men drinking wine and whiskey in their office and going out for long lunches and smoking cigarettes and cigars. And that really stopped in, let’s say the late 90s.
By 2009 I knew I had to reinvent my agency. I had done that a couple of times. I was going to reinvent it into a much smaller, much more hub, and spoke distributed agency staff model. And I just woke up one day and said, “You know, I just don’t want to do this again.”