Insights

Fire Your Advertising Copywriter

Peter · October 25, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Is it time to fire your advertising copywriter? OK, I am just kidding. I like copywriters. In fact, many of my best friends are copywriters.

OK, OK. I recently played with an AI writing tool called Talk To A Transformer. From the website:

Built by Adam King (@adamdanielking) as an easier way to play with OpenAI’s new machine learning model. In February, OpenAI unveiled a language model called GPT-2 that generates coherent paragraphs of text one word at a time.

For now OpenAI has decided only to release three smaller versions of it which aren’t as coherent but still produce interesting results. This site runs the largest released model, 774M, which is half the size of the full model.

Play with this. It just might write your next novel… or headline. (Yes, that is Bill Bernbach in the pic.)

Go here to see Talk To A Transformer.

Need More AI Copy?

Ad Age recently wrote about another AI writing tool.

Here is what Ad Age wrote:

Which ad copy for a banking service is more effective?

A) “Access cash from the equity in your home.”

or

B) “It’s true—You can unlock cash from the equity in your home.”

If you answered B, you are correct. It did better with Chase Bank customers than A did.

Answer B was written by a machine learning language model developed by Persado, “a New York-based company that applies artificial intelligence to marketing creative.”

Kristin Lemkau, chief marketing officer of JPMorgan Chase, noted that machine learning can actually help achieve more humanity in marketing. “Persado’s technology is incredibly promising,” she said in a statement. “It rewrote copy and headlines that a marketer, using subjective judgment and their experience, likely wouldn’t have.”

Chase plans to use Persado for the ideation stage of creating marketing copy on display ads, Facebook ads and in direct mail, according to Yuval Efrati, chief customer officer at seven-year-old Persado. He says that the AI company works alongside Chase’s marketing team and its agencies.

By The Way – I’m A Genius:

I put this copy into Talk To A Transformer: “Peter Levitan is a marketing genius.” Here is what I got back.

Levitan’s marketing plan for this film is genius. It should’ve been called The Greatest Marketing Plan Since The Great Depression.

This film should’ve debuted on the Oscars, but they gave it an A. It should’ve been called The Greatest Movie in Hollywood History.

Maybe with this tool, even I can become an official advertising copywriter.

The Advertising Agency CEO and Marketing Data Analytics

Peter · September 29, 2019 · 1 Comment

I recently had a couple of conversations about the increasing use of marketing data analytics in advertising, design and, of course, digital marketing.

A Big DUH!

The conversations led me to a DUH! A Duh! I am sure you are living through.

Data rules marketing these days (good or bad) given where we are in 2019 marketing. But, these conversations also delivered agency warning signs – and an opportunity.

The opportunity? Agency CEO’s and managers better learn how to use and discuss marketing and advertising data analytics with their current and future clients. I mean, really be able to sound smart.

I’ll tell you how below. But first, some marketing data analysis related insights from people who talk with clients all day long.

1. The Association of National Advertisers

Michael Donahue of The Association of National Advertisers pointed out that every size agency must make the use of advertising data analytics an integral part of their work. Period.

2. Ad Age

Lindsey Slaby in my recent post, “Ad Age Small Agency Podcast”, said the following — followed by my thoughts:

Lindsey: So we need to have the people at the top of some of those agencies that understand what data and analytics really means. It’s not putting one person in a corner to go work on this. Right? So I think that consultancies have really learned, and they’ve always played a part in looking more at the business in terms of revenue and bottom-line profitability, and they get in there and they have access to that information, and now they’re simply saying, “Well, now that we know all this about your consumer, which is so important, and the data, and what they’re listening, and what they’re talking to, and what they want from us, we would like to connect that to the actual advertising and create a benefit station.” And that makes sense to me.

PL Thoughts: The main point here is that in many agencies, especially in ‘creative/full-service’ agencies, management and staff do not fully understand a client’s complicated/complex sales spectrum. Much of today’s sales process is rooted in understanding, processing and leveraging consumer and market data. Unfortunately, in many agencies, data management has been relegated to a back-room function. Because of this, we have a bunch of agency leadership that simply is not schooled in data management and therefore in understanding the entire sales funnel.

Consultancies get this and deliver on the deliverable that they, and their MBA-fueled staff, are schooled in sales-oriented, high ROI solutions.

Agencies that rest on the singular idea that they deliver cool creative and a barrage of content ideas is not a very strong, stand-alone concept.

The Solution: Go To Columbia, Wharton Or Columbia

I am sure that sitting in the corner office, or even out in the sea of open office desks is not where you will get an in-depth understanding of data analytics. I think that this is a subject for proactive agency management. I know that the new consultancies eating big agency lunches get this.

Here is a good idea… Three online schools offer courses in marketing analytics. YO CEO: Why not take one of these courses and you can then tell your clients, future clients, and staff, that you now seriously get marketing analytics.

Head over to edX and see what Columbia, Wharton and Berkeley offer.

Want even more learning? Let’s talk about growing your business. I mean how to build a real sales and agency management plan.

You are in a hurry, right?

Contact me now and take me up on my impossible to refuse 15-minute Vito Corleone offer.

A New Advertising Book?

Peter · September 12, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Should I Write Another Advertising Book?

Should you write your advertising (agency) book?

I’ve written and produced four books since I sold my Portland advertising agency in 2012. I am now thinking of “writing” a new advertising book based on a tight edit of the best thinking I’ve delivered on this blog. I currently have well over 300,000 words here. The blog posts have been viewed over 340,000 times.

I’ll discuss why to bother turning the blog into an advertising book a bit later in this post.

Some History. Books I’ve Written.

These include:

Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide. This was my training wheels book on the, dare I say it, interesting subject of using suicide as a financial planning tool. When I sold my agency, my accountant said there are two things we can control: how much money you have and how much you spend. However, there is another major factor we cannot control: how long your money has to last. I went, um, why can’t I control the length of my life. Buy Boomercide here.

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I have read every book on pitching and presenting. This is without question the best book on this subject. Join thousands of other agency leaders and buy this book here. Or, pitch against the agencies that read my tome, and, dare I say it, possibly lose.

Potlandia and Jointlandia are two photo books I researched and shot about the early days of the burgeoning legal cannabis market. I shot these because I am an in investor in Portland’s cannabis industry and was fascinated by the early attempts (almost hippie-like attempts) at product and retail branding in what is now a billion-dollar marketplace. You can see these books right here. While you are at it, take a look at my other photographs. I am currently traveling around the world to photograph people on every continent.

Why Write A Business Book?

I think that there are four reasons to write a business book – an advertising book by me, a consultant, or your agency. [Read more…] about A New Advertising Book?

Google And Your Advertising Agency Podcast

Peter · September 6, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Do you have an advertising agency podcast? Yes? Cool. If not, Google might give you a new reason to consider having one.

You know that Google wants to eat your advertising agency’s lunch. How? By moving their considerable power to a no click environment. That means in an ever-increasing search universe, many searchers, your Google target market, are getting all the information they need from the Google home page or directly from a Google service. Ever search for flights on Google? Chances are the first thing you did was to go to Google’s own flight search.

Big Time Google Advertising Agency Podcast SEO Benefits

Now Google wants to get on the podcast wagon. They’ll deliver podcast information directly in search results. Like, why search beyond Google on podcast platforms for podcasts. What do I mean? Here is some copy from Google itself.

“Starting today, when you’re searching for a podcast about a topic on Google – such as “podcasts about Awkwafina” or “Instant Pot recipe podcasts” – we’ll show you playable episodes in Search results alongside web pages, news, images and videos. We’ll surface these episodes based on Google’s understanding of what’s being talked about on a podcast, so you can find even more relevant information about a topic in audio form.”

And from SEO-Hacker:

With podcasts becoming present in Google search results, this makes promoting podcasts much easier, while making them more accessible to a wider audience thanks to the increased searchability. The increased convenience helps make the listening experience more efficient while making more users discover new podcasts without having to browse and search through hosting platforms.

I’ll keep it simple:

Google will highlight information about individual podcasts in related searches. Example: Do you want to own an advertising-related podcast about “Instagram video advertising”? Google will find you.

Google will also transcribe some podcasts into text. Yikes!

This can be good stuff for your advertising agency podcast.

Ready? Go.

Beat the agency down the street to podcast subject ownership.