Insights

Ad Agency Business Development Trick

Peter · November 21, 2016 · Leave a Comment

My Business Development Trick Interview

I have a business development trick I use when working with my ad agency clients. It’s my easiest and yet most beneficial trick. After some highly intelligent blabbing, I point “my” agencies to a set of benchmark agencies that are directly relevant to my customized business development plan recommendations. These benchmark agencies are perfect examples of how to fine-tune an agency positioning, how to enunciate the positioning, how to do thought leadership, how to be concise, how to actually run a ‘sales’ program that delivers new clients and how to build a website that gets read… as in, not quickly passed by.

One of those benchmark agencies has been London’s LONDON Advertising.

I’ll play the trick for you if you chat me up… and hire me. In the meantime, here is an interview I did with Michael Mosynski the CEO of LONDON Advertising that’s inside my book on winning more ad agency pitches… The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

I suspect that there will be some ideas in here, Michael will help you create an agency story (note his simple sales pitch) that drives interest, how to beat mega agencies to win big accounts, how to build interpersonal chemistry and how to win the pitch. Oh, and how to create a simple agency website that sells the agency. Maybe one of the greatest tricks of all.

The LONDON Advertising Interview

Michael Mosynski is CEO of LONDON Advertising. He launched the agency seven years ago as a global agency built for today’s marketplace. The agency’s clients include Boots No7, Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group, Ketel One, W&O Travel, and Wegwood.

Prior to starting LONDON, Michael was the CEO of M&C Saatchi Hong Kong, Middle East, and London’s IS. Prior to joining M&C Saatchi, he held a range of senior positions at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide. We worked together in London.

PL: LONDON Advertising is positioned as an international, yet very nimble one-office agency that that delivers “One Brilliant Idea that can work in any media, anywhere in the world.” Why does this positioning generate interest from multinational clients? [Read more…] about Ad Agency Business Development Trick

Chatbots and Your Advertising Agency

Peter · November 18, 2016 · 1 Comment

Chatbots, Bots, Guest Posting and Your Advertising Agency

Check out my article Why Bots Are the Next Big Frontier for Agencies that was posted this morning on HubSpot’s marketing blog. The article discusses my views on the power of Chatbots, the looming opportunity for advertising agencies to get on this bandwagon and my personal experience running ActiveBuddy, an early Chatbot company.

3 Takeaways

My article offers three big takeaways (I mean immediately actionable takeaways) for your ad agency and its new business program:

Something new for you to talk about. Pay attention to AI and Chatbots. Savvy advertising agencies will jump on this bandwagon. It is real. Why? People like to talk to smart, friendly, uber programmed computers rather than tap out on the keyboard and phone. Oh, and Facebook loves chatbots.
Your skill. Advertising agencies are good at writing or should be. Creating smart Chatbots is all about understanding human communications and writing scripts that recognize how interpersonal communications work. This is what a savvy advertising agency is good at. That savvy agency is also good at building brand to consumer conversations. Believe me, you’ve spent almost 10 years building static apps. Chatbots will unleash your inner conversational bot expertise. This is already in-house.
Reach. I’m sure that you love your agency blog. But, guest posting on a mega website like HubSpot will drive way more incremental reach for your thought leadership, ideas and brand awareness. Why? Alexa tells me that HubSpot is the 529th highest ranked website. Get this, Ogilvy’s website is ranked at only 41,659 — after zillions of years of being in the ad business. Even a smart one at Ogilvy should think about guest posting if she’d like to reach more folks.

On the subject of reach… after only a couple of hours, my post was shared lots. See….

Last point. Here is the video ActiveBuddy made 14 years ago to launch our company. You’ll see that I thought bots were a big fucking idea then. I still do.

Advertising Agency Business Development Timing

Peter · November 14, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Is Your Advertising Agency Good At Timing?

This might be the most important advertising agency business development blog post you will ever read. It is all about timing. And, it discusses an oh so simple solution.

Why? Because if there is any one thing that advertising agencies of all sizes do not do when it comes to business development it’s… a paucity of planning and follow-through.

Note: My research with agency clients indicates that only 40% of agencies use and are slavish to their business development calendar.

I don’t care if you are small or huge. Failure to run your plan, once you have one (and, yes, this is a whole notha story), could be your primary failure. You know it and I do. We even have an oft and way over-used metaphor to describe the issue… the cobbler who does not have the time to make shoes for his own children. I am tired of hearing this parable and so should you. It is a ~~shitty~~ poor and very lame excuse.

You want clients like Nike and Audi and that huge healthcare client and that global e-commerce website job, right? Well, do you think that these marketers sit around and talk about how they do not have the time to plan and run their sales program? That they are too busy working with their current customers to go find new ones?

If Your Agency Is Shoeless… Read On

Look, I get it. I ran business development at the world’s largest agency and at my own digital and advertising agency companies. Hey, I even do sales right here at my consulting company. Sales requires dedication and on-going activity. It is time-consuming. It takes you away from servicing your current clients. It can be a real pain. But, if you do not do it with a high degree of consistency, you will fail and will go under. You certainly won’t make enough moolah to buy that Porsche 911 or the Cadillac of mini-vans for your kids.

The Solution: The Business Development Calendar

Trump Wins – A Mexican Newspaper Headline

Peter · November 9, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Trump: A Mexican Newspaper Headline

I’ve gotten lots of tongue-in-cheek congratulations today from the USA friends on Trump’s win. OK, not because he won. While not apolitical, I don’t broadcast my personal politics.

The congratulations came because my wife and I were so smart to have moved to Mexico in July. As background, here is my Moving To Mexico post.

The Headline

The point of this blog post is that I imagine that some Americans must be wondering what the Mexican press has to say.

Above is one of the newspaper headlines. Translates to: Trump Wins… and Shocks The World

I had lunch with a Mexican friend today. She asked me these three questions. How to answer?

When will the American police start to round up the millions of Mexican children living in the USA?

Don’t Americans remember that the last time a Republican was president the USA wasted trillions in Iraq and launched a massive recession?

Will there really be a wall?

I just shrugged my shoulders. I do not care if you voted for Trump or not. How do you answer these questions in a way that makes sense?

Pesos

Wondering what the Trump peso effect is? Here’s a chart. In this case, I can say that Donald Trump beeeen berry gooood to me.

Is Your Ad Agency Special?

Peter · October 31, 2016 · Leave a Comment

The “Special” Ad Agency Wins

I’ve written about the need for creating ad agency differentiation if an agency wants to excite and win new clients…

(I know, I know, you know that I know that you know how important having an agency positioning that stands out is.)

But, most agencies do not seek a high degree of differentiation. They are not bold. Full stop. They are willing to be not different.

There are many reasons for this. One of the most expressed fears is that (and I know that this is going to sound insane)… is that agencies do not want to sound too different for fear of losing the opportunity to pitch LOTS of clients. The belief is that being a ‘general’ agency, even a general digital or PR agency, will beget more opportunities to pitch for a broad range of clients. These agencies are playing a losing numbers game. Having a clear, yes narrower, refined, brand positioning will win in the end.

Give clients an opportunity to view your agency as being special and unmistakenly desirable. Think different and look different.

My Unignorable Agency Presentation – 9 Paths To Special

I was recently asked by a large agency network to give a brief presentation on what are key ways to differentiate an agency. I came up with nine paths to being Unignorable: Positioning; Attitude; Ego Mania; Specialization; AHA!; Carpe Diem; Humor; Awards; Your Website.

Each one of these paths represents an opportunity to help your agency stand out from the other 3,999 agencies seeking the clients you deserve and… Be Different.

Hope yo enjoy the presentation and take away a couple of paths to specialness.