Insights

Will You Sell Your Advertising Agency?

Peter · April 6, 2018 · Leave a Comment

The Big Question: Will You Sell Your Advertising Agency?

Will you be able to sell your advertising agency someday? The simple answer… probably not. That said, see below for two Portland “advertising” agencies that just got bought.

I Know You Want It

Most of the advertising agencies I talk with want to get bought – sooner or later. Who wouldn’t? However, most will not. There are a range of reasons. But here is the big (rather obvious) one:

Most agencies have not created enough value for a second party to want to buy them. A key question I ask agency owners is, “Would you buy your agency?” You can imagine the general answer once the CEO puts her thinking cap on.

Value is created by having one or more of the following:

Your agency is a revenue powerhouse and is very profitable.
Your specialty is unignorable. Example: you are a brilliant mobile marketing agency or specialize like this Boise agency.
Your client list is spectacular.
Your strategy and creative chops are notable and world-class.
Your leadership is super smart.
You are in a geography that a major agency network needs to be. This benefit has been diminished over the years but can still generate interest. How is your Saigon office doing?

OK, On To Portland

I’ll start with me. I sold my agency six years ago. I did this because I was realistic. We were not cool enough for WPP or large enough for Publicis or special enough for MDC. But, we were very attractive to another Portland agency that needed to grow faster. They bought our revenues, clients (from Nike AOR to major healthcare, to a lottery and casinos and hospitality accounts), our very sharp staff (all of them) and it was all made easy since we were in town. I also wanted to get the fuck out of the industry (I had been it for close to 30 years) and did not want to go through another reinvention so I took a reasonable offer.

Instrument Bought By MDC Partners

Here is the first paragraph of the press release.

MDC Partners announced today that it has acquired a majority partnership interest in Portland, Oregon-based digital agency Instrument. Founded in 2002, Instrument is one of the largest independent, digital brand and experience innovation companies in the U.S. The agency’s 175-person team of strategists, producers, designers, engineers and content creators helps drive businesses and engage consumers. This new partnership accelerates MDC’s growth and builds its portfolio of modern, innovative and digital-first agencies.

WPP’s POSSIBLE Acquires Digital Agency Swift

The press release…

WPP announces that its wholly-owned company, POSSIBLE, the global creative digital agency that is part of WPP Digital, has acquired The Swift Collective, Inc. (“Swift”) in the United States.

Swift’s revenues for 2014 will be over US$13 million and its clients include HTC Corporation, Starbucks, Nestle USA and REI. Based in Portland, Oregon, Swift employs over 70 people. Swift is a digital agency that specializes in creative and strategy, branded content creation and social media.

The acquisition continues WPP’s strategy of investing in fast-growing markets and sectors such as mobile and digital.

OK, What’s Up?

A few things.

Portland is a hot “creative” geography.
These are both VERY digital shops.
They each have strong client lists. Google, Sonos, Levi’s.
They have decent (higher than most independents) revenues.
They are run by smart people.

So, you want to sell? Create value that someone else wants to buy. Start today and make creating agency value an objective. This goes beyond just adding clients. It means standing out in a sea of advertising agencies.

Frozen Emails And Business Development

Peter · April 4, 2018 · Leave a Comment

How Not To Freeze Your Business Development Emails

I’m not a big fan of cold calls, cold emails, or cold anything (a key reason I live in Mexico.)

However, in the land of lead generation, there are times when a cold “Hi There” email might simply be the only option. Or, better yet, a smart element of a master plan.

A cold email, a smart cold email, can, if done well, create awareness of your advertising, design or PR agency and, more importantly, begin to seed the idea that you are an insightful marketer that is worth paying attention to. In the best of all possible worlds, the smart “intro” email becomes a much warmer email because it delivers a relevant and hopefully “must read” business insight. If part of a strategic sales plan, the email will become just one element in a longer, more consistent, business development campaign.

Who Gets The “Warm” Email?

I’ll discuss email techniques in a bit. But first, who are you targeting? If your plan is to reach the right people, then you need to figure out who the right people are. Yup a duh. But, you’d be surprised, and competitively delighted, to know that many agencies don’t really know who (is it whom?) they want to reach.

Get your lists right first

Direct to prospect Email is an outbound tool. I recommend using it to reach two target buckets. These groups come from understanding your agency’s brand positioning, its sales proposition, what potential clients will truly be interested in your message and your ability to stand out and be Unignorable.

The Big List

I’m thinking about targeting your agency’s master lead gen list. The longer one. This might sound insane, but my agency had a 1,000-decision maker mailing list. This was our ‘reminder’ list. Our objective was to create awareness of our chops just in case the client needed us that day or month. Note: our strategic list rarely had unsubs since we were slavish to delivering value. This large list is hard to personalize (beyond customizing the right fields). But, you can segment it so you don’t send useless emails that will make you look and sound lame. The key, as usual, is to deliver relevant marketing insights.

The Small List

In this case, I’m referring to a hot list of say 25 to 50 client candidates. These folks, who should without question be your client (example: you are a baby boomer specialist agency and your client target group sell laxatives – LOL). For this must-get group, you’ll need a much more direct, human and, again, highly relevant, super-sharp insight-driven program.

Your List Building

Buy a list. Yes, just drop the coin on this one.

Build a hand-built list using a low-cost intern.

Use email finder tools like Hunter.io, Skrapp, and Anymail. There are more. Just ask Google.

Get the event list from that industry event you just attended.

OK, The Cold Email

This is a well covered subject area, so I suggest that you take a couple of hours and do a Google search to better understand best practices. However, here are some thought starters and a bit of guidance.

Understand that your target market is inundated with emails. Many marketing people get over 100 a day. You have to break through. Within milliseconds. Subject Line is KEY!
Testing a range of email options to get to the most opens is critical. Examples: test subject lines; who From; copy length; graphics; timing (as in the day of the week and time of day); the timing of follow-up emails; your call to action and even the ‘hooks’ you use like what micro cases or research you use to get people’s attention.

For your very personalized emails (the ones sent to your hot list) do the following.

Spend the time researching the person. Get into their head.
Understand their key pain points and figure out how to address them. No, not every pain point, but one or two key ones.
Make the subject line personal. Let’s say you are that baby boomer specialist and you want to target Schwab’s marketing director. Use a line like this: “New Research For Schwab: Baby Boomer to Millennial Inheritance”.

……. Want to hear other ways to grow your agency? Have you called me yet?

How A Boise Advertising Agency Went Global

Peter · February 1, 2018 · 1 Comment

Get Past Local. Go Global.

If you are a Melbourne, Dallas, Cardiff, Charlotte or Boise ad agency you just might be stuck herding smallish clients in your regional market. Becoming a global advertising agency is simply not going to be an option if you position yourself as a generic full-service or digital agency. Bottom line, a New York or Sydney client is not going to take a second look at you (or find you) unless you have a very specific service specialty that crosses borders – even states. Clients are willing to rule out the need for a local agency if they perceive that you have a specialty that they need – regardless of geography. Having a specialty will also make you stand out and drive your search engine marketing – as you will see below.

Boise’s Oliver Russell figured this out three years ago and blasted past their western state borders to become a global player.

Here is my interview with Oliver Russell’s CEO Russ Stoddard. Russ started Oliver Russell in 1991 and he and his agency have become leaders in the world of marketing purpose-driven companies, sustainability initiatives, and socially responsible organizations to help them better compete in the marketplace. Russ’s dedication to a category focus has delivered on his objective of becoming a global player.

Russ Stoddard Has Gone Global

Peter: What’s up?

Russ: I’m Russ Stoddard, and I’m a social entrepreneur. I have a creative marketing agency in Boise, Idaho, that works with purpose-driven companies.

Peter: How is business these days?

Russ: For us, it’s going remarkably well. We’ve got an area of specialty and differentiation, which means we actually have people coming to us, rather than having to chase clients down.

Peter: That’s great news. In terms of agency history, has that always been the case, or did you switch to a more specialized perspective at some point in recent history?

Russ: We’ve been around 27 years, and it took me 23 of those to finally take the medicine.

Four years ago, we repositioned very strongly around working with purpose-driven companies, which we define as those that have a very intentional bent around creating a product, service or business model that benefits society. [Read more…] about How A Boise Advertising Agency Went Global

Buy These Advertising Books Today

Peter · January 29, 2018 · Leave a Comment

Advice: Buy These “Advertising” Books

I first met Paul Arden when I moved to Saatchi & Saatchi London in 1991 to run the J&J account and business development across Europe. Paul was one of Saatchi’s most famous creative directors, had worked on major agency accounts like British Airways, Silk Cut (a cigarette brand) and Fuji. He was a very serious London dude dressed in Saville Row suits and Havana cigar smoke.

Our first argument happened about five minutes into our first meeting on my second day. I think (know) that he had disdain for American ad guys and he presumed that I was a dweeb. Because we had to work together, the head of the office managed our relationship by seating us next to each other at a table in the big Saatchi Wimbledon tennis tournament tent. The kind of big money client event that was standard in those days. We sat down at our appointed places, looked at each other, laughed and decided to like each other.

The next argument occurred when Paul created a rather expensive video (without anyone’s approval) to illustrate the big idea that we presented to Adidas when we were a lock to win their international account and I was going to build my own sports agency to run it. This was a big fucking deal for the agency and me. We didn’t win it. It was the worst advertising pitch ever. Read about it here.

Paul’s Books

I highly recommend Paul’s books. Smart, full of easy to digest insights (you like small books, right?) and rather witty. Buy them and put them on your desk. About $28 bucks will make you look like you have your act together. Reading them will help you get your act together.

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be.

Here’s the pitch on Amazon:

It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be is a handbook of how to succeed in the world – a pocket ‘bible’ for the talented and timid to make the unthinkable thinkable and the impossible possible. The world’s top advertising guru, Paul Arden, offers up his wisdom on issues as diverse as problem solving, responding to a brief, communicating, playing your cards right, making mistakes and creativity, all notions that can be applied to aspects of modern life.

Whatever You Think – Think The Opposite.

From Amazon:

The inspired follow-up to the international bestseller It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want to Be.

Bursting with ideas, innovations, art, philosophy, science, and brilliantly bad advice from Paul Arden–a cult figure in the worlds of advertising, art, design, and marketing–Whatever You Think, Think the Opposite offers a new way to approach business and life.

Do me a favor by doing yourself a favor – buy these.