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Borat Did A Video Just For For ME

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A Few Words From My Best Buddy Borat About My “Advertising Stories” Podcast

Borat for LevitanBorat helps me by asking… “What is make beautiful Advertising Stories podcast? People should listen.”

He also asked, “What you mean by telling your agency clients that they need to be unignorable? Yo want unignorable? You got me! A special gift for you, my American puppy.”  Or… “Агенттик кардарларыңызга алар жагымсыз болуш керек деп айткыңыз келгендиктен, сиз жагымсыз болуп калгыңыз келеби? Мени алдыңыз!”

So… I obviously had to go to Almaty, Kazakhstan last week to find Borat to have him make a video for me and Advertising Stories. This was not an easy get. First, I asked my friend Quentin Tarantino to find and then ask Borat’s daughter Tutar Sagdiyev to see if Borat would be in town. Tutar then asked Borat if he would do me the favor of making a video promotion for my advertising podcast for the wonderful, podcast loving, people of Kazakhstan. He was interested in doing almost anything for the great United States – if I promised to arrange a lunch with him and Rudy. Mayor Rudy said, sure what the hell. I’ll do anything these days.

I flew for 42 hours from Mexico City to Frankfurt to Istanbul to Almaty. Borat and I shot the video in my hotel room at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Almaty. I had a tub in my room – I mean in the bedroom itself –  and he insisted that he bathe and eat blinis and caviar while I played Beatles songs before the shoot. A bit weird all around – but strangely refreshing. Subscribe to my newsletter and I will send you the picture of me and Borat in the tub.

You might ask “why did Borat do this for you?” My Kazak friend is thanking me for introducing him to Rudy Giuliani. And to prove to you, that even an advertising agency business development consultant can walk to unignorable talk.

 

The Advertising Agency Website Walrus Style

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An EY Podcast Just Asked Me “What Is Missing From The Advertising Industry Today.” I Said Creativity. Ya Know, Ideas That Grab Attention And Move People. I See This Missing Link Also Running Rampant In The Advertising Agency Website Ocean. Then I Found Walrus.

I am feeling ranty these days. And,advertising agency website have this particular rant that I often repeat to my agency clients… GET UNIGNORABLE. The amount of sameness in the world of the advertising agency website world is numbing. This is a bad thing since prospective clients do most of their agency selection before they ever pick up the phone.

Welcome To The Walrus Advertising Agency Website.

Since New York’s award-winning agency (important awards) walks the creative talk and is in fact unignorable… I’ll just go fast here.

So, what works for Walrus?

  • What you first read when you look them up – as in their Google snippet = “World famous creative shop located in Union Square New York City. Where clients go to get rich, ideas go to get famous, and bivalves go to get devoured.”  Different + benefit-driven and what other agency mentions clams?
  • The Home Page has a talking Walrus. Cute. It works as a branding element and a very fast way to get you to ask, WTF?
  • Need more info? The social-style information links on the bottom of the page take you to the Walrus Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Medium accounts, and an email thingy. Walrus does not need the endless number of website pages to tell you who they are.
  • Walrus is all about the work. Human, funny and, oh so not data-crazed, yadda yadda sameness… the advertising you see for brands that most other agencies world kill for is smart. Did I say funny? Like Walrus’ ads get a viewer to stop and watch, listen absorb. These ‘ads’ will also get the attention of the right clients. It’s kinda good for agencies to know what type of clients they want.

The Unignorable Walrus Thing.

The Walrus vibe is cool and interesting and, repeating myself, gets the attention of the right client. I am thinking that this means a client looking for strategic / creative brains.

I am not alone in preaching that advertising, digital PR, you name it agencies, need to get a bit specialist to make it in 2021. I talk about ad agency positionings here. I also say that trying to be known as a ‘creative’ agency isn’t easy. Creativity is very subjective. That said, the right client for Walrus will find them and will dig the creativity and want some of that. It is called mating. Mating requires a bit of unignorability.

OK, OK, I Know You Want To Know How Walrus’ Mate.

I had to find out. So, I went to How Stuff Works. Here you go…

The remaining females congregate on the ice pack and prepare to be entertained by the males in the water. One or two males generally perform for each congregation of roughly 23 females — presenting a series of vocalizations both above and below water. Here, the males’ pharyngeal muscles (near the throat) come in handy both as flotation devices and as amplifiers. The males simply inflate the pouches to remain upright in the water and begin to serenade.

If you woulld like to see another unignorable advertising agency website (from 2011), check out how BooneOakly used YouTube. 

Oh, did this work? 1,372,449 views so far.

 

 

 

 

Best Advertising Podcast List

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advertising podcast listThe  Advertising Stories podcast program publishes smart, funny, and useful interviews with advertising and marketing leaders. There are a LOT of podcasts out there. So, to make life a bit easier, here is my very own best advertising podcast list.

I have produced 40 episodes since June. And, As you know WOM rocks, so tell your friends all about Advertising Stories. Thank you.

Oh, and please subscribe via Apple Podcasts or use the subscribe links on this page.

Here Is The Best Advertising Podcast List – Handy Dandy.

[Read more…] about Best Advertising Podcast List

The Best Advertising Agency Podcast Ever

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best advertising agency podcastI am so unbiased. Therefore, I can say without any hesitation that this is the best advertising agency podcast interview. How do I know this? I was recently interviewed by what I consider the best (well in addition to Advertising Stories) advertising agency podcast and host. Full stop. Great interviewer and I was, on that day, a brilliant speed-talking guest.

I discuss my loooong New York, London even Oregon advertising career, how to pitch (I wrote THE pitch book – see the top portion of this page), and how to buy and sell an advertising agency (get this 57-page freebie by subscribing to my occasional newsletter).

The Best Advertising Agency Podcast? It’s Aqui: The Businessology Show

The Businessology Show is a podcast about the business of design and the design of business It is hosted by CPA/coach Jason Blumer. Jason is a leading financial and accounting consultant for the advertising and marketing communications industry. I said expert, right? Also, a really cool interviewer.

 Here is the show – go here: “Pitch It.”

About this show… from Mr. Blumer

Businessology is a platform to help designers, developers, and agencies run more successful businesses. One of the greatest things about the web industry is that we have the desire to share the most valuable tips and tricks of our trade with our “competitors.” When it comes to business, however, that knowledge seems to be kept behind closed doors.

This podcast was started because we want that information to exist in the open. We talk about what to charge for your work. We talk about how to do great work that your clients value. We talk about business models. We talk about managing projects. We talk about growing. We talk about the business side of design and how you can most effectively design your business. We coach real owners of real agencies working through their own growth complexities.

Guests have included Tim Williams; Matt Faulk (here is my interview on winning Webby Awards with Basic’s Matt); and, Drew McClellan of The Agency Management Institute (AMI).

Go listen…

 

The QR Code Menu And Covid-19

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Digital Acceleration Baby: The QR Code Menu And Covid-19

QR Code MenuThis post is about the increasingly ubiquitous QR Code menu as an indicator of digital acceleration in the time of Covid-19. There are few things I personally dislike more than mobile phone usage at the table. However, your mobile is now a critical element in the restaurant experience.

First, a bit of Nike. A few years ago I had a really depressing meeting with my long-term client Nike about the use of a graphical QR code on their worldwide packaging. I gave Nike a very doable idea about what I absolutely knew was a brilliant, low cost, and potentially powerful global marketing mobile experience. Simply embed a QR code into every Swoosh logo on every box that found its way into every house in every country. Turn every dumb box into in-house 24/7 mobile marketing. Bring Jordan into the home.

Yes, QR codes can be graphical. The digital watermark QR code idea was developed by Digimark, another agency client. The idea was to replace the funky black and white code with an interactive logo, picture, or word. I am talking about having an interactive Swoosh mobile marketing tool hand-carried into millions of homes. Easy, cheap, doable. And why the fuck not? Did Nike buy this idea? No. They just stared at me – “Why would we want to send a digital experience into homes vs. our current “dumb, do nothing paper box?’ I was like. “Are you kidding me?”  That was the day I decided after giving really smart ideas to clients over my 30-year global advertising career, including winning programs that delivered lots of EFFIES, that I was done with owning an agency. Frankly, it felt like pearls before swine. Am I being harsh? Sure. Read all about the experience and see the Nike presentation here:

Nike Made Me Sell My Advertising Agency.

The QR Code Menu As Indicator

I first noticed the use of QR codes in Tokyo in the early 2000s. I was standing on a street corner in Shibuya and saw some teens pointing their phones up at a QR code on an outdoor board. I went over and saw that their aiming triggered a digital experience appearing on their phones. Whoa!!!

I said, we gotta have some of that.

Cut to like 8 years later and my advertising / digital agency started working with the tech leader Digimarc which owned the patents for digital watermarking. That is how I came to the idea of creating an interactive “smart box”.

Restaurants. Way back in 2018 there were over 600,000 restaurants and 54,000 hotel properties in the USA. All of these businesses are barely touching the opportunities embedded in mobile marketing.

Why just a menu? Digital check-in? Why not more remarketing? Diner or guest data? And, on.

Covid-19 As Accelerant

Cut to 2020. What more can be done?. Covid-19 is acting as a digital accelerant. More people are buying online, ordering food delivery, communicating with brands online, and now using their phones to read a digital menu. We are studying more online and getting digital healthcare, using exercise apps, ordering in.

Less touching and breathing all around.

As more and more people of all ages are becoming even more slavish to their Androids and iPhones… shouldn’t we be seeing more and more uses of the handy mobile code as a marketing tool?

Side note. China, as an example of the future, has gone like 100% mobile. You even scan and pay by phone for the low-cost bao bun on Shanghai’s food street Fangbang Road. We, MAGA focussed Americans, will get there sooner or later.

Your Digital Agency & The Code, And Big Ideas: GO!

OK folks. Your agency should always be looking for new ideas to excite your clients. What can you do with THE CODE?

Advertising, mobile events, packaging, in-store, on the street… For Burger King or your local pizza chain?

Should I send this blog post to Nike? Adidas, Amazon, any brand with a box at a time when in-store interactions are down?

OH!!!! Maybe your agency should!!!