Search Results for: linkedin

Wexley School For Girls: Advertising Agency Of The Week

Peter · March 20, 2013 · Leave a Comment

Did you hear the one about the ad agency? Probably not. There isn’t much humor in the ad biz. An advertising (or digital or PR) agency with a sense of humor is as rare as a Sasquatch sighting. Believe me. I’ve looked at hundreds of agency websites. But, but, check out the Wexley School For Girls.

FYI: This was written in 2013. Sadly Wexley School For Girls closed. Word on the street is that most of the Wexleyittes moved to Panama. I have not changed the post’s tense (as in today vs. yesterday to protect the innocent).

But, Seattle’s Wexley School For Girls has delightfully stared down the idea that dull is a positive agency attribute. Wexley has built a strong business around the idea of quirky plus sound strategic thinking plus compelling execution. This formula has netted them a very sweet client roster that recognizes that boring is boring and boring doesn’t cut it in a world where consumers / viewers now control the advertising experience.

How Funny?

Lets start with the name Wexley School For Girls. In a world of agency initials, founder names, cute names (I admit to this, my agency was called Citrus) and names that are so random and universal that it takes five minutes to find the agency on Google (go find Breakfast.) In me-too name-land, Wexley stands way out.

As Seattle Weekly reported in 2007:

“The name,” jokes the 40-year-old Ian Cohen, “came from a group of nuns in Wexleyshire, England. They were cantaloupe farmers with a holistic approach to their garden.” Advertising Age put Wexley first on its 2006 list of favorite agency names; the company beat out Tokyo Plastic, 86 the Onions, and Acne.”

Attitude?

“We really kind of want to be ridiculous, and it seems ridiculous that you could actually do business in this building,” says Cal McAllister, whose company does business with Nike, Microsoft and ESPN and others. “I think overall that Wexley is funny, but it’s not a joke.”

Agree, Wexley is funny / different in a world of ad agencies that barely register any sense of brand differentiation.

This attitude is carried across all the agency’s brand messaging.

Here are some shots of Wexley’s Seattle office.

Twitter.

Wexley’s Twitter profile reads like an effective online dating profile and why not? Even prospective clients are looking for an “interesting date.”

@Wexley Advertising agency filled to the brim with incredibly creative, attractive, cut, cut, buff, ridiculously gifted, yet humble and gorgeous people. Everywhere. And in Seattle.

On to the agency’s LinkedIn profile, which now adds a strong direct / social sales proposition (other than their buffness) by introducing the idea of Fan Factory.

Wexley is a fan factory. We take your money and turn it into thousands, tens of thousands, millions of thousands of crazy people. We can create them. We can reinvigorate them. We will deliver them. Fans that stay for a lifetime of loyalty, with the spending and championing that comes with it.

Our biggest value as an advertising agency is not just getting fans in the door, but earning and sustaining their fanship over the long haul by entertaining them time and time again. As they hold you in their hearts and minds and on the tips of their tongues, we engage them in ways you can imagine and others you cannot. It’s pretty simple, really.

And, YouTube.

Wexley continues to drive their brand mantra across YouTube and supports it with work that would not come out of stodgyville. Wexley has 64 videos up. Well over the agency average (vs., just for the hell of it, Droga5’s 54.). Take a look at this video for otherwise stodgy Microsoft’s Window Phone. And, note that it’s close to 1 million views.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PitGqCeJF8c

And, Facebook.

Hello there. FYI: Facebook was our idea in the mid 90’s and even though Al Gore created the internet, we thought of the phrase, “Information Super Highway.” So, yeah, you’re welcome people of the internet.

The Wexley School For Girls Website?

Not a me-too site. Here is an early version. Simple, to put it mildly. The soundtrack made it — maybe. Well, it always made me need to click through. So, it acted as an audio CTTSTM thing (I just made that up… CTTSTM = click-through-to-stop-the-music.)

Today? Click around the golf balls (marketing directors like golf balls) to see work for: ESPN, Microsoft, Oberto, Rainier, Taco del Mar, and Wilson.

Once you’ve seen the work and heard the story, Wexley sends you to a contact page that actually seeks contact and makes the hard to resist offers of, “If you want to hire us and make yourself rich and famous call:” There is even a humorous message for job seekers if you want to move on from your not so funny agency.

A caveat… I mentioned Wexley to an agency friend. She thinks that they, and the way they talk about themselves, might register as being a bit too full of themselves. OK, I can see where she is coming from — and yes not being too full is a Northwest attitude red flag. But, ALL agencies are full of themselves. In this case, it’s nice to see an agency that at least knows how to express its ego and use it as a sales proposition.

Do You Need A New Name? One As Good As Wexley School For Girls?

Here is how to name an advertising agency.

Let’s not start at “no thanks.” I really can help. I know it.

How? Let me start with a quick story.

saatchis-sq

My office at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising’s London HQ belonged to Maurice Saatchi before he and Charles moved to more palatial digs across town. I’ve got to admit: sitting in what was once the epicenter of Saatchi’s global empire was pretty damn inspiring. One day, ECD Jeremy Sinclair, Maurice and I were sitting in my office working on a pitch. Suddenly, Maurice stopped talking, looked around, turned to Jeremy and said, “Boy, we made a lot of bad decisions in this office.”

Maurice’s honesty was a revelation. Building a major agency, even one as successful as Saatchi, wasn’t without its mistakes.

Growing your agency probably isn’t a slam-dunk either. You may need a major course correction. Or you may need a few intelligent tweaks to your business development plan. In either case, I can help you make the right decisions to move your agency forward, upward and onward. And, really, isn’t that what it’s all about?

So, before you bail out. Why not talk?

A Corleone offer.

corleone-sq

Let me make you an offer you can’t—or rather, shouldn’t—refuse.

Let’s meet for fifteen minutes—just 0.25 on the timesheet— to discuss how I could help you plan for growth. Think of me as a catalyst or a consigliore.

Best case: You’ll realize I can help you take your business to the next stage. Worst case: You walk away with at least one business-building insight.

It’s an offer that even the Don would admire.

LET’S TALK:

1-541-419-2309 (Pacific Time Zone)

Email: peter@peterlevitan.com

Skype: peterlevitan2

Twitter: @peterlevitan

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/peterlevitan

Like hard copy? Here is a handy and informative Fact Sheet.

1,247th Blog Post On Advertising Agency Social Media

Peter · February 13, 2013 · 5 Comments

There are over 177,000,000 results for the search phrase “advertising agency social media” on Google. There are now whole industries based on social media advice. So, in the interest of piling on… I’m about to add one more blog post on social media and advertising.

But, before I start, lets make sure we agree on what social media is. Here is a concise definition from Dictionary.com that includes the critical object of increasing sales.

Web sites and other online means of communication that are used by large groups of people to share information and to develop social and professional contacts: Many businesses are utilizing social media to generate sales.

Just in case you are still wavering about how much effort to put into social media…

Here are 17 reasons that ad agencies should use social media as a new business tool.

When managed systematically, the strategic use of social media will drive inbound attention for your agency.
Social media will support your agency positioning and drive awareness of your thought-leadership.
Social media is relatively easy to create and manage. If your mother can do it, you can do it too.
Social media is easier to update than your agency website.
There are lots of platforms to choose from: Twitter, blogs, Pinterest, Facebook, LinkedIn, G+, YouTube, Wikipedia and SlideShare. Each has unique strategic benefits and workload — choose carefully. More are coming.
You will have a corporate LinkedIn page as another agency marketing platform. All of your employees will link to it.
You will use social platforms for direct marketing. For example, you will use twitter’s “@” to directly contact client prospects.
All social platforms, like your blog and Twitter, will be seamlessly linked together for efficiency and traffic generation.
Social Media is integral to the agency SEO program. After only one month, my Pinterest advertising agency website directory is appearing on the first page of Google results.
You will learn to use social media analytics to continuously improve your programs.
You will stay up to date with the evolving state of mobile social media.
Your strategic use of social media will help you look like an expert to your clients. You will walk the talk.
Do social right and you will generate positive case histories based on your expertise. I’m building a case right now for my Pinterest strategy.
You will use social to do agency and client research. Twitter remains an untapped resource for following news on perspective clients.
You will use social media to better understand a potential client’s online audience and brand perception.
Your social media expertise will make you will look smarter in pitches.
You will undoubtedly use your social media expertise to create award-winning programs like Projector’s Facebook work for Intel.

All is not rosy. Here are 7 reasons not to use social media.

Agency senior management does not really get it – at all.
Your agency is not capable of making an adequate time and intellectual commitment to marketing via social media.
You don’t have one or more people dedicated to owning the social program and its on-going success.
You will be inconsistent. You really don’t want to be the agency with 4-month-old Tweets.
You won’t make the effort to integrate your social media program into you agency marketing plan.
You think that all you have to do is a little bit of social media and you’ll quickly get lots of incoming calls from prospective clients.
You don’t have a distinctive agency positioning, message or voice to promote. Me-too messaging won’t make a dent in this space.
You won’t stand out. Just take a look at how few advertising or digital agency blogs are on Ad Age’s Power 150 list of influential blogs.

So, what is my bottom line?

I’ve used social media since the 1990’s to grow companies (online newspapers) and website traffic (over 20 million users for my SmarterChild Instant Messaging bot.) However, like any effective new business tool, the use of social media must be strategic, linked to an expertise-based content strategy, be targeted and needs at least weekly oversight. Do this… and social media will work for you.

Give me a shout. I can help.

Advertising: Get Ahead Of Disruption… Or Else.

Peter · February 12, 2013 · 9 Comments

Advertising Service Disruption

I wrote this post in 2013. it is…. still relevant. If not more so.

“If you dislike change, you’re going to dislike irrelevance even more.” – General Eric Shinseki

In 1995 I moved from Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide to launch New Jersey Online for Advance Publications. It was exciting to play a role in the burgeoning online news industry. It was also scary to know that the daily newspaper was about to be disrupted by the Internet. We had a sense of what was coming and created new online approaches to deliver the news, new advertising formats and new services including well-trafficked community forums which were a harbinger of the coming power of social media.

What most in the newspaper industry didn’t see coming until it was too late was Craig Newmark. Craigslist started as a San Francisco event email service in 1995, moved to Web based delivery in 1996 and then expanded into other categories. Craigslist began to rollout across the world in 2000.

Craigslist and other online classified sites like HotJobs, Monster, Realtor.com and Cars.com radically disrupted the newspaper industry’s multi-billion dollar golden goose – classified ad sales. Some of you might not remember the huge amount of newsprint devoted to auto, jobs, real estate and for-sale classifieds in the late 1990’s. But, just imagine that the classifieds sections alone were at least as thick as today’s current dailies. Newspapers derived much of their cash from small classified ads, not from Macy’s display ads.

The decline of newspaper revenues from the loss of classified sales and the move to other forms of digital advertising and news delivery has been dramatic. I’ve keep this image large for effect.

Obviously newspapers are not the only business that’s being disrupted. Guess what, even Craigslist is getting hammered by newcomers.

Yikes!

(The chart might be clearer at Andrew Parker’s Gong Show.)

And, what about the advertising industry?

While I don’t think that the world of advertising agencies will experience the dramatic loss of industry relevance akin to newspapers (or travel agents), disruption is a daily occurrence that is affecting our bottom line. The billions spent via Google’s AdWords DIY services has to come from somewhere. That somewhere is the total pot of advertising dollars.

Even some analog businesses are disrupting the old advertising model. Talent agencies like CAA have morphed into marketing agencies with their CAA Marketing in-house agency winning a Cannes Grand Prix for their fantastic Chipotle TV commercial. But wait, there’s more. The barrage of disruption is growing daily.

Agencies that are not really “agencies”: Conde Nast Studios and Radical Media, “A global transmedia company that develops and produces television shows, films, commercials, brand identities, advertising concepts, digital content and event-based entertainment.”
DIY design: I keep seeing ads for 99 Designs. “The #1 marketplace for graphic design, including logo design, web design and other design contests. Over 150000 satisfied customers!”
DIY ads: Google AdWords, LinkedIn, Facebook and Spotrunner
Implementation: avVenta, “avVenta resources plug into existing marketing operations to help brands reduce operational costs by improving processes, global standards and outsourcing key responsibilities” and E-Graphics, “E-Graphics Worldwide blends global multichannel capabilities with in-house efficiencies, that adapts and extends your marketing message.”
Ideas: Ideascicle, “It’s expert sourcing. Not crowdsourcing” and Genius Rocket and their pitch…

GeniusRocket is what an ad agency looks like when it’s stripped of Madison Avenue skyscrapers, high-priced creatives on payroll, sushi dinners at Nobu, and two-week shoots at the Viceroy in Santa Monica.

Is it time for advertising agencies to roll over and die? No.

But you may need to change your stay-the-course mindset – and soon. For starters, ask yourself if using yesterday’s business model is hindering your growth. Maybe staying the course seems sane to you but living by past decisions and worrying about sunk costs could make you red meat for disruption. But, that’s not how the digital community plays…

“If you’re not doing something crazy, you’re doing the wrong things.” – Google CEO Larry page

I recently read the results of a CIO Network task force on how major corporations deal with disruptive technology. The task force was co-chaired by CIO’s from Jet Blue, Nissan and Rio Tinto. These CIO’s offer some relevant advice to avoid irrelevance.

Here are a couple of their recommendations plus some of my thoughts and ideas related to the advertising industry.

1. CREATING A CULTURE

“CIOs should create a cultural appetite that accepts change, risks and failure, and understands that innovation can take time. Invite venture capitalists and entrepreneurs to talk to senior leadership and identify ways your business is going to be disrupted.”

My Plan:

Accept and embrace the idea that change is good.

Take some of your agency time to do a SWOT analysis to identify and begin to address change-driven Threats and Weakness that could impede your agency’s future. In the world of disruptive technology, the future is next month not next year.

Get out of the office and meet with start-ups and young, hungry technologists. Go to tech events. Trade your services and experience for start-up insights and energy. Here is a blog post I wrote on AdPulp about the importance of getting out of the office. Religiously reading AdWeek in the comfort of your office will not grow your agency.

2. PARTITION DISRUPTION

“Name the disruption and then partition it as a separate business with separate financials, people and metrics.”

My Plan:

Leverage the disruption by building a business around it. Think like a start-up. Is this a brand new idea? No. But, are you?

I had a chance in 2008 to be an early leader in the new Android applications market. It was a relatively low cost way to move my agency into mobile marketing. But, I seriously blew it.

When I learned that Google’s Android was going to launch an application SDK, I asked our Digital CD to accelerate the creation of a new business unit by buying a related URL (like, www.androiddeveloper.com; it was early); build out a lean lead-generation website to highlight our expertise (as in fake it to start) and run some Google ads to gauge early market interest to see if we could generate incoming leads. All of this was designed to make us look like we had our act together while we were going out into the Portland mobile developer community to find partners. Unfortunately, the CD didn’t share my need for speed and he dragged his feet until we missed the early-stage window of opportunity.

I learned three things.

Starting a new division or operating unit on the back of a disruptive technology is a good idea.
Just do it. Be quick to prototype, test, iterate and launch especially if it can be a low-cost entry. When pundits say that agencies should act like start-ups this is what they mean.
Hire the right people who share your energy and bias for action. The wrong people could kill your future. The Digital CD left a couple of months later.

To see a company that actually lives and leverages disruption, take a look at New York’s The Mobile Media Lab. They embrace visual technologies like Instagram and Pinterest as brand new marketing services that are getting major client attention.

3. KEEP HEAD OUT OF SAND

“Identify and accept inevitabilities and work them into your strategy. Create an unassailable argument around the inevitable to gain acceptance in the organization.”

My Plan:

Create an innovation culture or maybe an innovation team. Benchmark companies like IDEO.

Help your people understand that without innovation you might have to close your doors; they could lose their jobs and even careers.

Build a system for continually identifying disruptive and opportunistic technologies and use scenario planning and estimated financials to help review business opportunities. You don’t have to completely change your business model. Maybe all you need to do is add a new marketable service. Something purple (as in Purple Cow.)

A last word.

One of my favorite clients was Legalzoom.com. Legalzoom.com is in the business of disrupting the legal industry. Disruption is cool if you are the one doing it. I’ve used Legalzoom.com for my wills, advance directives, power of attorneys and LLC formation. They easily curtailed my use of lawyers and, like my experience in online news, heightened my understanding of the dramatic power of digital disruption.

To demonstrate my agency’s understanding of the idea of disruption in our Legalzoom pitch, we used a photoshopped picture of a large yacht sitting on a trailer in downtown LA. The For Sale sign read… “Lawyer needs cash. Thank You Legalzoom.”

OK, one more last word.

I just did a search on me to see when I started to think hard about disruption. Here is a link to a 1996 AdAge article that included some of my thoughts on the subject: “Classifieds prove to be a goldmine for online outlets.”

New Business Planning & Sales.

I have new business planning and sales down cold. I’ve run them globally and nationally for Saatchi & Saatchi, regionally and locally for my agency, and for publishing and tech companies. I view effective business development efforts as having four crucial elements:

Agency management focus and ongoing dedication.

A compelling agency brand and positioning (a.k.a. an attractive service story) crafted to meet market needs.

An agency marketing plan that includes an annual new business plan.

A dedicated lead generation program.

Depending on your needs, you might need a revamped business development plan, including target market lists, lead services, out and inbound marketing, CRM management, direct marketing, and even the Holy Grail… a powerful new business director (who I can help you find and manage.)

Or, you may require assistance with specific tactical elements. For example, how to build and execute an integrated social media plan. I have been successful using blogs, audio and video podcasts, LinkedIn, Twitter and even Pinterest. I have been building audiences using social media since the mid-1990’s, before most people even knew what social media was.

For an example of how I leverage social media for my own business development program, take a look at my Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory.

[previous][next]