Insights

Advertising Agency Marketing and Getting Past Sameness

Peter · December 30, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Beyond Sameness: An Advertising Agency Marketing Objective

This mini-thought-piece is about getting away from the awfulness of advertising agency marketing ‘sameness’.

First of all, of course, all advertising agencies are by nature the same. All dry cleaners are the same. All bars are the same. All optometrists are the same.

All advertising agencies make or deliver ads. Dry cleaners clean clothes, bars serve drinks and optometrists check out your eyes.

However, some agencies get past sameness and stand out from the pack. How do they do that?

How To Leave Sameness Behind?

Sameness sucks, but if you are like me, you do have your favorite dry cleaner (mine looks very modern); bar (mine is on a roof) and optometrist (mine is young and knows the latest methods and speaks English) I live in Mexico.

How can you get your advertising agency away from acting and looking like the agency down the street?

It isn’t by delivering the same message. “We are cool” / “We are smart” / “We know social media” / “We are creative” / “We have nice furniture” / We have a very human culture” / “We know content.”

The way out of this mess (the mess is huge given that there are over 4,000 ad agency-type choices) is to make looking and sounding different a goal. I call it being “Unignorable.”

6 (Easy) Paths To Being Unignorably As IN Un-Same-Ness Advertising Agency Marketing

Get past sameness. Make not being the same, make not being IGNORABLE an agency objective. Here are some things you can do.

Market the hell out of your agency. This means having a super smart plan, a plan that you run 24/7. Good news for you… most agencies do not do this. Just by running a solid business development program, you will be not same-like. How is your outbound program? Your account-based marketing calendar? Your must-read blog? Your Linkedin program? By the way, could you swap out your name and put in another agency and have all of your marketing activity be too same-like — as in not branding you? If so, you are screwed.
Get specialized. Pick something narrow to be known for. What’s available… Think expertise. Be the micro-expertise digital specialist example: Own search engine marketing like HawkSEM. Own data marketing expertise like Delve. Own category expertise like Red Interactive and entertainment.
Own geography. Portland’s Grady Britton is not only one of the oldest agencies in Portland, but it also supports the city. Check out its Portland non-profit grant program.
Own a high-interest demographic. Miami’s Viva owns multi-cultural marketing. Linda Gonzales, its leader, is a recognized expert. She gets the calls from the trade press about anything related to cultural marketing.
Own a personality. The essence of getting past sameness is having a personality. The clients you want, buy people (you are in a people business). Australia’s Tiny Hunter does a couple of things right from the go. First, they tell the market that they specialize in family business marketing. Second, they introduce you to the leadership team right away via a home page video. Tiny Hunter is all about people: the type of client, the client’s customer and the agency leaders. How clear are your agency’s message and personality?
One more. Have a website that isn’t interchangeable with your neighbor agency’s site. And, remember, ask for the order. Your website is a sales tool.

If you make sameness your enemy, you will become unignorable.

Best Of 2018

Peter · December 18, 2018 · 1 Comment

No, no, don’t worry, I am not going to make a long list of the best of 2018. I am just going to tell you about my best personal experience.

The People

I have been working on a major photography project for a couple of years. As I say on my photography website:

“I am traveling around the world to shoot The People, my long-term portrait series. My ultimate goal is to amass well over one thousand simple portraits that foster empathy and a better understanding of the world and its people. Think visual ethnography. I’ve now made over 330 portraits in Mexico and Selma, Alabama. Next stops are Havana, Cuba, Indonesia, and Argentina.”

I was in Selma Alabama for three weeks in November. I was graciously accepted into the community and took 140 individual portraits. The pre-planning process and working in a new environment is one of the most interesting aspects of the project. I can’t just parachute in and hope that I find the people I want to photograph. I need some local help. For example, my upcoming trip to Havana in February is being set up by a large Cuban family. I’ll arrive having 30 brand-new friends.

I love this stuff.

Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church

I knew when I headed to Selma that I wanted to photograph members of an African American church. Sure, I know, a stereotype, but, iconic nonetheless. Churches are an important element of any Southern community portrait.

On my second Sunday, Pastor James Perkins, Jr invited me to attend the service at the Ebenezer Missionary Baptist Church. Pastor Perkins had even prepped the congregation that a photographer with a big white background was coming.

I arrived at the church during the sermon. Pastor Perkins was preaching about how we all have different personal “languages” – different ways of communicating. As an example, he mentioned that if the congregation was going to reach out and be meaningful to young people, then the younger members of the congregation needed to be the church’s voice. The older folks simply do not speak the same language as sixteen-year-olds. It was during the sermon that I realized that my “language” is photography. A seemingly obvious, but meaningful revelation.

As the sermon was ending the lady users put on their white gloves and when the congregation began to sing hymns, the ladies took my hands and held tight.

I began to cry.

Stats From Google

Peter · December 13, 2018 · 1 Comment

Google Stats: Desktop vs. Mobile vs. Tablet

I always find my website’s Google Analytics interesting (those are mine over there).

How does your website look on mobile? Does it sell the agency in that small window?

I am also surprised (well, not really surprised) at how few agency leaders, management types, look at their stats. And adjust.

[And then wonder why the leads are not pouring in.]

Advertising Agency Strategic Planning And Insights

Peter · December 7, 2018 · Leave a Comment

How Your Advertising Agency Can Leverage The Value Of Strategic Planning And Insights For Growth

I am sitting next to a 1.5-inch three-ring binder from Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide called “Saatchi Insight. Strategic Planning Tool Kit”. This book was our advertising agency strategic planning and insights bible.

I took this tome with me when I left Saatchi in 1995. At that time, I was running business development across North America and, sadly, this was the last year that Maurice and Charles Saatchi ran the company. No, don’t be too sad. The brothers went on to build the smarter M&C Saatchi and I moved into digital marketing and publishing. I believe, as do many, that 1995 was the end of the great Saatchi & Saatchi reign.

The “Saatchi Insight. Strategic Planning Tool Kit”.

This toolkit includes 15 sections with strategic process brand names like MASTERBRAND, BRAND Detonator, The Saatchi Temple, The Consumer Connector, Funneling, The Media Monitor and Scenario Planning (at a time when this term was rarely used outside of Saatchi). The brand names helped position us as super smart in our new business pitches and, of course, with resolving existing client issues.

I’ll be hitting up insights from this book in a few blog posts because I think that advertising agency marketing-oriented strategic planning is an underutilized agency specialty. I strongly believe that having a clear and compelling strategic program can be a differentiator for today’s look-alike advertising agencies. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Strategic Planning And Insights