Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Ladies and gentlemen: The Pitch. OK… How could you not like the name of this agency?
Pitching, to consumers that is, is in fact what advertising agencies do for their clients. So, why not name your agency The Pitch?
Oh, agencies also do a lot of pitching for themselves, but you knew that. Oh, and everyone in LA is pitching something all the time. So, The Pitch is a name-tri-fecta.
Find The Pitch on Pinterest’s largest database of advertising agencies. (I love pitching that.)
Yes, I said it sucks.
Here is what I hear every day from large and small agencies. This should sound familiar. In fact, it is what I said when I owned my own agency and ran business development at Saatchi.
I close 80% of all the face-to-face new business meetings I have. All I need is to get in to in the room.
We lost the pitch but we came in second.
Um… does this add up? Everyone came in second? Nope. So, like I said, advertising agency new business math sucks.
That said, it IS a numbers game. What do I mean?
Have an “A” list of 25 or so clients that you really want (and should have) and then market to them. Intelligently. Try this for ideas: “13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business”
Have a longer list of all the others that should know about your agency and find efficient tools to have them find you or for you to reach out to them, say about once a month. At the most.
If you don’t generate awareness, and this IS a numbers game, you are invisible. Invisible isn’t good.
Lets talk. Its free. Oh, about 75% of the agencies that contact me wind up using my services. These numbers don’t suck.
It isn’t often that we get to see how advertising agencies advertise themselves. Thanks to Advertising Week and its Guide, we can see how 40 agencies advertise their brand or promote their session sponsorships. Its a rare opportunity to look into the heads of the agency world.
The ads fall into three types:
[Read more…] about Advertising Week: Advertising Agencies Advertise
I promised my friends at Advertising Week that I’d list 24 advertising agency positioning ideas. Here’s the list. First a couple of caveats.
I know that from a Brand Police perspective, that these may not be pure “Brand Positions.”
They are, however, meant to be thought-starters that lead the way out from our more standardized — as in me-too — agency positioning statements to the promised land of differentiation and, most importantly, to provide a reason to have your agency stand out from the 4,000 or so other “agencies” down the street and around the globe.
If you’ve made it this far (I am assuming you’ve read Parts I and II) congrats. I hope I’ve started to stimulate some thinking to get your agency past the same old same old.
Don’t forget to read Part I.
I advise advertising agencies on how to build and manage extraordinarily innovative business development programs.
I can do this because I ran business development at Saatchi, for my two Internet start-ups and for my own Portland ad / digital agency. I understand the brand positioning, messaging and marketing issues confronting global, mid-sized and small agencies. I am also a decent bloke.
Let’s go. Click this link.
Welcome to Part II of How To Position An Advertising Agency. Here is Part I. It’s a good place to start.
I know, I’ve positioned and re-positioned my own agency and do this for my ad agency clients. Here’s what you are up against.
Most advertising and digital agencies do essentially the same things for a living. Once you’ve decided on advertising or digital or integrated or mobile you are up against many other advertising, digital, integrated and mobile agencies.
Most agencies fear not being able to offer all things to all clients.
Differentiation itself may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. “The general challenge for any brand in any market is that what is differentiating is often not motivating and what is motivating is not necessarily differentiating.” This from Michael Moszynski, CEO of London Advertising (more on London later.)
Clients have a very short attention span. They might not spend the time required to read your carefully crafted copy. In this case, being concise would help.
[Read more…] about How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part II