Insights

The Best Advertising Ever

Peter · October 22, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Volkswagen: The Best Advertising Ever. Period.

Best advertising ever?

OK, one of the best advertising campaigns – ever. No question. This legendary campaign from the Mad Men days and Doyle Dane Bernbach was, well, fucking brilliant. Great strategy, lean approach, super fine copy (read it oh ye content writers), art direction and photography. These ads were impossible to NOT read.

Please watch this video below: “Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads?” (especially if you are under 40.) Hear the people who made the ads talk about making some of the smartest advertising ever.

Remember, this campaign pitted Volkswagen’s tiny post-war German car against Ford, Chevrolet, and Dodge. Not an easy play. This is a good, free, marketing lesson for us all. Buzzfeed has all of the ads right here.

The BIG Idea

Advertising has gotten a bit too complicated these days. Words like programatic, bots, content, analytics, SEM, funnels, infographics, authentic and on. We can easily forget that is all about the BIG, impossible to ignore, strategic, yet oh so simple… BIG idea. The idea that captures our attention and excites.

Ode to my audience of business development directors: You’ll win more new business if you… Deliver ideas and insights that capture your prospective client’s attention and excite them. AHA! moments just like Volkswagen did.

BIG ideas follow…

Two Advertising Agency & Client Chemistry Strategies

Peter · October 10, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Two Advertising Agency Chemistry Strategies

I have been focused on the idea that interpersonal chemistry is one of the most important decision-making criteria that a client uses when selecting an advertising agency. I also ~~think~~ KNOW that chemistry can be massaged and managed. In fact, if you want to win, you better work on releasing those special business pheromones.

Managing Chemistry

I recently advised an advertising agency on their approach to a pitch that included how to run an interpersonal ‘chemistry’ new business meeting. The agency is one of seven agencies in a pitch for a very large east coast client.

The client asked for a ‘let’s get to know each other’ chemistry meeting because they know that by the time they had narrowed their list from the four thousand agencies out there (yikes) to seven, that much of their decision criteria on which agency to move forward with would come down to likeability and an understanding that the agency had the intelligence to help efficiently grow the client’s business.

The client needed this meeting because…

All Advertising Agencies Look The Same!

Ok, ok, all agencies are not the same. But, I can guarantee you that probably five of the seven agencies are so similar in approach, client base, case histories, skill sets, office furniture, etc. that the client realized that the interpersonal chemistry element was ultimately going to be a critical decision-making factor.

While my agency client and I discussed a range of pitch issues and opportunities, we settled on two must-have’s to make the meeting work in their favor.

Client Meeting Management

First, we discussed how to plan and manage the meeting. If an agency cannot run a smart meeting – especially the chemistry meeting, then the client will immediately begin to think that you cannot run a smart agency client relationship. I am a very strong proponent of the art of meeting management. I suggest that you read this post on how to manage a meeting. Your clients will love you for it. Hmmm, maybe even some of your future clients as well.

Deliver A Trial Run

Since this was a chemistry meeting – a ‘get to know each other’ meeting – I informed agency management that the best way for the agency to demonstrate that they were a good fit for the client was to… act like they already had the account. [Read more…] about Two Advertising Agency & Client Chemistry Strategies

More: How To Build A Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program

Peter · September 19, 2016 · Leave a Comment

How To Build A Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program – Part Two

This Is part two of an interview about becoming a smarter advertising agency… Part One is right here.

WARNING: This is a long blog post about how to build a better, smarter advertising agency. Actually, this is Part One of an even longer post. It is a looong post for a couple of reasons.

This is a transcript of a 40-minute interview on advertising agency business development that I did with the super savvy Drew McLellen and his must / should listen to advertising podcast, “Build A Better Agency“.
Google loves loong blog posts. So, having an interview transcribed into text is a very good SEO tactic. I’ve done this before with some of the interviews I did for my book on pitching. Having text allows me (us) to have an audio and text for a blog post which can then be marketed across social media sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter. It is a very smart idea to extend the reach of any thought leadership you do. So easy too.
Some people would rather read an interview than listen to it so here it is.
I want to use Drew as an example of how to do and market a podcast. To date, he has done 49 interview podcasts. Podcasting provides 4 basic but sweet benefits. 1) It is a great way to look and sound like an expert by interviewing other experts; 2) podcasts are relatively easy to do; 3) interviewing people helps you make friends (imagine having an agency podcast in your agency’s specialized category where you interview potential clients); 4) it is all about marketing yourself or your company.

The Full Service Agency Issue

Drew: What about the idea of every agency that presents itself refers to itself as a full-service agency regardless of if they have 3 employees or 300 employees. What’s your take on that?

Peter: Most agencies were full service once upon a time. Then we started to see a move into direct marketing, which has been happening for years as we seek ‘proof’, but I’d say about 10 or 15 years ago, direct marketing started to look really attractive as digital marketing started to happen because analytics … all of a sudden we could really track everything.

There was a move into that. In fact, at one point I renamed Ralston Group, the agency I bought, Ralston360. The 360 moniker, which I think became way overused, was really about understanding the full spectrum of marketing. The problem, unfortunately, with full service, while most clients need it, it just doesn’t provide enough of a niche basis for them to be able to position you differently than the other agencies.

That said, the reality today is that most of the digital agencies I know are being asked to do a full-service work, but they’re at least, at the start, able to position themselves in a niche.

I like full-service. The problem unfortunately is, while the clients probably want that, what they don’t get out of that is any differentiation between you and the next guy. I don’t like those words, full service.

Drew: We go into the field and do some research with CMO’s and sort of different attitudes they have about agencies and how they work with agencies and everything every year. Last year, we sort of explored the idea of the words full service. What we heard from the folks who participated in the research was they don’t believe it. When they look at an agency of 20 people and they know how complicated marketing has gotten, especially on the digital side, they sort of say, “I don’t think so.”

Peter: Yeah, I mean to an intelligent marketer, I agree completely. Really, nobody’s figured out mobile marketing yet. How could you conceivably say that you understand the full spectrum because there are elements that are changing so fast that there are very few agencies that actually can lay claim. Now that said, I’ve seen agencies that just say we’re a mobile agency and they’re doing very very well.

Drew: Right.

Peter: There are a lot of factors here. It’s just really understanding where your internal skillset fits into the spectrum.

Get This Right: Positioning & Fame

Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development

Peter · September 15, 2016 · Leave a Comment

How To Build A Better, Smarter Advertising Agency Business Development Program