Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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How NOT To Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

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How Not To Win While Losing

download loserA friend in advertising sent me the following email. I’ll follow it with some thoughts. I removed names to protect the innocent (actually, not so innocent).

“I read your long blog post, “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program“. Every sentence is worthwhile.

I did new business at Big NYC and Big L.A. agencies, and then at BlahBlah/SF, where it was my sole responsibility for 3 years. The biggest thing I noticed at BlahBlah was that they lost their biggest client every year. If they had shut down the new business operation and had me, or someone like me, be the client retention and client delight manager, the agency would’ve doubled in size just by not losing the biggest account.

What a piece of insight! But, being digital geeks, the principals didn’t like to leave their desks, screenss and their HQ meetings. Instead of wandering the halls of their biggest clients, cementing the relationship and pulling in even more business, they stayed in the office talking about getting new clients, which, as we know, is a low-odds practice.” 

My Unpack

Business Development Is A Must Do

I tell all of my agency clients that they must have a business development plan that runs 24/7 because they will lose large clients every year. This inevitable loss has accelerated over the past few years because an ever increasing number of client assignments are now ‘projects.’ Larger, longer Agency Of Record accounts are becoming scarce. Is the need for a BD plan a secret? No. But, half of all agencies don’t have a sustained sales effort that will replace those lost clients.

Grow Your Current Clients

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Put The iPhone Camera Down

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Martin Parr Does Not Use An iPhone

cd6f8d15-1133-440b-8152-e742b20ea300Do you know Martin’s work? You should. From LensCulture:

I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience.

— Martin Parr

Martin Parr deliberately directs his camera at the unspectacular, the commonplace, the normal, at things that at first glance do not seem worthy of being captured in a photograph. His dissecting gaze reveals in an honest and unflattering way the excesses of our contemporary society.

My Friend David Bowie On My Personal Mantra

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Just Watch & Listen To His’ Advice.

Hey, you could be reading a bunch of marketing… advertising… ad agency… how to do social media, etc. stuff. This is much better advice.

My Friend David Bowie On My Personal Mantra

“If I feel a little unsafe where I am going –  I am going in the right direction…”

 

Must Watch Internet Trends Via Mary Meeker

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Share This With Your Team: Mary Meeker’s 2016 Internet Trends Report & Its Impact On Advertising

meeker-trends1_featuredA must read: The annual Mary Meeker peek at what’s happening in the Internet universe.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Mary Meeker delivers her annual internet trends report. She says “easy growth is behind us” as the newest internet users are coming from less developed and less affluent countries. Meeker also delves into artificial intelligence, Snapchat brand integrations, changes to live sports viewing habits, car industry innovation and the rise of millennial consumers, and on.

Better Advertising Please

Read this and process before your client’s do. Especially the thinking on why we need better ads — the effect of the growth of ad blocking.

-> Why aren’t more advertising agency blogs discussing this major issue?

The Unignorable Advertising Agency

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The Unignorable Advertising Agency Wins New Clients

ignore-eyes-covered-ss-1920There are lots of ways to win a new account for your advertising agency. You get a referral (the default for many agencies); you have unique expertise (let’s say e-commerce); you are known as a specialist in a category or geography; you have a kick-ass thought leadership program that gets read and passed along; you are an SEO genius and are listed on page one for your Google keywords.

I’ll show you one more approach below.

An Unignorable List

But first, here’s a list of ways to avoid getting a prospective client’s positive attention. Even worse, some profound ways for you to be very very ignored.

  • Send them a one-off copy-heavy email and hope they respond.
  • Send them a series of emails about how wonderful your agency is (not them or their issues), and then hope they respond.
  • Find other special ways to bug the hell out of them. Multiple voicemail messages anyone?
  • Ensure that your agency sounds exactly like the other agencies trying to get the client’s attention. Here’s a list of me-too advertising agency positionings. Where are you on this list?
  • Make sure your agency’s website looks just like your competitor’s website. Similar jargon? WordPress templates, anyone?
  • Hope that the prospects will go on and on to find your position on Google that’s on page 4 of the listings for your competitive agency set.
  • Start, stop, start, stop, start your inbound and outbound business development program.
  • Make new business an “oh, we’ll get to that” proposition.

And on and on. I’ll stop so I won’t bore you. Or worse, scare you.

Maybe smarter… here is a way out.

Why Not Try Being Unignorably Creative?

 

Clients are smart. Clients get social media. Clients can produce their own content these days. Clients understand marketing (sort of). Even worse, many clients think they can bring all of that in-house.

But what they can’t do is be unignorably creative thinkers. Just can’t do that. Not in their DNA. Nope. But it’s in yours, and it is a major reason for your existence (unless you are just data marketing or apps geeks, etc.) and, if used intelligently — your creative secret sauce.

One of the ways that the leading (and famous) agencies get incoming new business inquiries is by being ‘unignorable‘ and you know the usual agency suspects because you hear about them every award season and read about them in AD AGE. The thing is that you know how to be famous too. Many in our industry are chasing technology when they should be chasing and proving their creativity. In the advertising industry, creativity breeds fame.

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