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An “Advertising” Cure For CPG’s Ills

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An “Advertising” Cure For CPG’s Ills

images tideImagine creating a new marketing company that directly goes after a huge industry’s Pain Points. I mean, directly.

I just read, “2 Saatchi Alums Vow To ‘Clean Up’ CPG” in MediaPost. These ex-Saatchi guys vow to help clean up CPG’s big needs per the article …

“As the consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry continues to experience sharp declines in sales, two former Saatchi & Saatchi senior global executives, Vaughan Emsley and Cliff Francis, are launching Clean Up On Aisle 7, a new consulting firm to help CPG brands be more effective, responsive and agile in today’s changing landscape.”

Why Is The Idea Of This New “Consulting Agency” So Smart?

5 Big Reasons.

  1. CPG is in bad shape. Overall purchases of consumer-packaged goods in the U.S. declined 2.5% in unit terms in the first quarter, according to Nielsen.
  2. Volatility sucks. There are “probably more sources of volatility today than at any other time in history,” P&G Chief Financial Officer Jon Moeller said Wednesday in a call with reporters.
  3. CPG companies have been rather slow to adapt to the new world of digital marketing and consumer shifts. They need some speed.
  4. Clean Up On Aisle 7 (a cute name but a bit lengthy) aims to go directly at these major client pain points.
  5. Clean Up On Aisle 7’s management has the history and ecperience to deliver smart thinking. “Previously, Emsley served as the global client leader for all Publicis Groupe agencies working on P&G brands, while Francis worked as the former worldwide creative director for P&G brands at Saatchi & Saatchi.”

OK, One More Smart Point – For Your Agency.

Clean Up (a shorter version as I am sure they will be known) stands out from the huge pack of advertising agencies and consultants that do not have a well-defined positioning, a bold reason for being and a hard to ignore sales proposition.

A new company dedicated to curing the ills of CPG meets a clear need and… stands out.

They are unignorable.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Does Your Thought Leadership Kick Ass?

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To Be Unignorable, Kick Some Thought Leadership Ass

500AEC7B-7AB5-41BC-8AB0-FD500EDA9A54_0If you are one of my clients, you have heard me talk about how to be unignorable. That means, do not be ignorable. Which means, do not put forth me-to thought leadership content (copy, videos, podcasts, white papers, books and on and on) that can be easily dismissed by your target market.

How To Stand Out?

Want to get heard and talked about? Be bold. Tell it like it is. Say something that resonates. Have an opinion. Be bold and be quick. Act like Mario Andretti (you know who he is, right?) A quote:

If everything is under control, you are not going fast enough.

Well, L2’s Scott Galloway is not under control. He lets it hang out and… he is NOT ignorable. A sample… his opinion about Amazon, Apple (love this one!), Facebook and Google.

The History Of Podcasting

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The History of Podcasting +

google meThis is my 600th blog post so I thought that I’d be particularly insightful (in my mind at least.) Stay with me as I am about to ramble about me and some business development insights. A bit later, I’ll actually discuss the history of podcasting. But first, some back-patting.

I am consistently on Google’s page one for searches for ‘advertising agency business development’. This in-your-face ranking drives my business. How did I wind up on page one?

My Blog @ 600 Posts

I have posted about one subject = advertising agency business development since January 12, 2013. With this post, I am now at 600 posts. While not totally slavish to my primary keywords of ‘advertising & agency & business & development’ (note today’s Podcasting headline), I have hammed the subject of advertising, digital, design and PR agency business development and sales with short 200 to 500-word posts up to very long 3,000 word plus posts for 4.5 years. Google seems to like the consistency and dedication to providing relevant targeted information.

In addition to being a dedicated weekly blogger, I have effectively increased the amount of my content by publishing chapters from my 70,000-word book, The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. and love using interviews as long-form blog content. Interviews are a go-easy way to deliver 1000+ word content. Interview the right people via audio or video (I use my iPhone, Skype and Zoom) and voila – content. Interviews deliver content that can be transcribed to text overnight via a company like Rev.com. With just a bit of editing, you can easily have very valuable text (Google candy), audio, podcasting, and video (YouTube candy) for your blog and beyond.

Beyond? I amplify my content via my email list, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and SlideShare. This meets my Rule Of Five — get the content on at least five distribution platforms.

There is more to my content marketing strategy including a love of guest posting. However, you will have to take me up on my Vito Corleone Offer to learn more. [Read more…] about The History Of Podcasting

Social Media Needs Personality

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No Personality = Boring Social Media

09352fdbe35a23ea367800dbbb95df42-439x285Here is an article worth reading about the power of personality to driveB2B  social media readership.

I read CBInsights newsletter every day. In addition to its making me smarter, it is fun to read.

Is Your Content Boring?

You can be informative and boring. Or, you can be informative and entertaining. I’ll take the later.

Some words about CBInsights’ non-boring approach from Tearsheets “Anand Sanwal is bringing love to finance data”.

Every evening at around 6 p.m., over 300,000 people get a love letter in their inbox. After some charts, random news bits and some snark, it ends with an over familiar (and some might say downright creepy) sign off: “I Love You.”

That’s the trademark of Anand Sanwal, the 43-year-old CEO and co-founder of a B2B data company, CB Insights, and self-proclaimed introvert.

“The newsletter affords me the ability to be a little bit outlandish,” he said. “In person, I prefer to be anonymous. In the little geek circle we play in, it’s become tougher to be that way.”

Sanwal did, and the newsletter exploded. With the right tone, humor and a hint of irreverence, Sanwal and his team have made data fun and developed character that connects with its readership. The newsletters highlight terrible charts on the Internet, pick through troves of CB Insights data and data visualization and even include hate letters from readers.

The Plan

Sign up to get CBInsights. Read it for two weeks. Decide that interesting is better than boring. Take a hard look at your thought leadership content and decide for yourself…

Should We Be Boring Or Interesting?

The Best Advertising Agency Website

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The Best Advertising Agency Website… Sells

SIMPLEI’ve been talking to an increasing number of advertising agencies about how to rebuild their agency website to be a more effective sales tool – to be a best advertising agency website. The operative word here is – sales. It is critical that agencies think very hard about how to funnel a visitor from ‘just visiting’ to making direct contact.

Your website is most likely the first time a prospective client will spend the time to get to know your advertising, design, PR or digital agency. It could also be the last time they see you, and worse, you might never know that they even took a look.

Getting your website right is critical to growing your business. Not setting it up to sell could be one of your worst business development mistakes.

Here are some general thoughts about how to turn agency websites into sales tools. I know that this is timely because most agencies, even ones that just launched a new website last week, are always thinking about their next website. I’d bet that you are too.

The Optimal Agency Website

8 Seconds…

Prospective clients give an agency website about 8 seconds to hook ‘em. That means 8 seconds to describe the agency and give the prospect a good reason to read on. 8 seconds! You know what I’m talking about… you probably give most sites you visit just 8 seconds to tell you why you should stick around.

Once you’ve hopefully sparked interest, clients look hard at agency websites for a clear understanding of what you can do for them (your skills); who you have worked for (proof); past work (more proof), agency thinking (brains); who runs the shop and agency personality (chemistry).

Once you’ve satisfied a potential client’s information needs, you will need to corral them into making contact. After looking at hundreds of advertising agency websites over the years, I can tell you (no surprise) that the great majority do not employ the basics of site visitor conversion. Most agency websites do little more than offer a very basic contact page to, hopefully, help the client make contact.

Sorry, it isn’t that simple.

Some Website Food for Thought

You have limited time to capture the attention and interest of a visitor. How do you do that? Here are some ideas.

Simple Works Hard

I am a fan of simple, fast read design. It’s hard to argue with the power of simplicity. As support, here are some words from the master of keep things simple.

“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs

Here is an example of an agency that not only preached simplicity; it used super clean and direct design to support its very own brand proposition.

m&c sattchiSee how M&C Saatchi tells (well, once told) prospects what they will get from the agency as soon as the visitor hits the home page. M&C Saatchi delivers its message in about 1.5 seconds. Given the main message, could you imagine the agency having a complicated design to express this thought?

Maurice called the delivery of simplicity: One-Word Equity. This was their pitch from a few years ago. And, there can be no argument that his direct statement still works in today’s over-stimulated ADHD world.

 

OK, One More Uber Simple Website…

 playgroundJust to hammer the KISS point, I am including the home page of Playground. It took me 1 second to know what Playground is.

While I am not sure that saying “We are a digital creative agency” is a standout agency pitch, it is, without question, direct and therefore stronger than the front door of most agency websites.

What I Like: Website Elements

Once you have stopped the website visitor with your direct home page message (something compelling via copy or a video), you’ll have the time to tell them your agency story and supply key information.

Services

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