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The Best Advertising Agency Creative Brief

Peter · June 12, 2021 · Leave a Comment

The Best Advertising Agency Creative Brief – I Think (Well, I Know)

I started my advertising agency career at New York’s Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, one of the original Mad Men agencies. Other than having an absurdly rich AOR client list (Toyota, P&G, General Mills, Nabisco, Wrangler, HP, and on) we were known for our ‘best’ advertising agency Creative Brief. This brief worked so well that it was adopted by the 4A’s as the gold standard.

That was then. Does this agency Creative Brief still work to guide brilliant advertising? I think so.

The Best Advertising Agency Creative Brief For A B2B Podcast

I applied the Creative Brief format to one way I think that an advertising agency or any B2B marketing org could build and run a standout podcast. By the way, think that it is easy to stand out in the world of podcasts? Check out these numbers from PodcastInsights.

Also, a common question is “how many podcasts are there?” and most of the data out there is outdated, but we have an accurate method for determining the number of shows – and it’s currently over 2,000,000.

There are also over 48 million episodes as of April 2021.

I wrote this Creative brief for one of my agency clients a few months ago. Therefore, it might seem a bit outdated, or better yet, prescient. Go ahead and use the idea. The idea will work for many industries.

I highlighted the core CB sections / questions in red.

A Sample Podcast Creative Brief

CREATIVE BRIEF: Giant Gorilla Agency Product/Service: The Marketing Journey Podcast

January _1_2021

Background

London’s Giant Gorilla agency specializes in hospitality industry marketing.

It has been successful in building a large client base across a range of industry subcategories. Giant Gorilla is known for its strategic approach, data expertise, high ROI programs, and for its business insights and social media channels.

It is time to move this energy into podcasting.

What is the objective of the project?

Create and produce a daily, unignorable podcast for the hospitality industry.

The Marketing School podcast from Neil Patel and Eric Siu, is an example of a daily listen. Each show averages 5 minutes and includes a commercial.

Who are we talking to?

Listenership will include food and beverages, lodging and recreation industry corporate marketers, business owners, and related press.

What do they currently think?

The hospitality industry took a major hit in 2020. We expect a slow but steady revival in 2021. Current trends point to growing domestic travel and then a resumption of international air travel by the third quarter of 2021.

The industry is ripe for the consumption of marketing information related to category growth.

What do we want them to think and what action do we want them to take?

We want the industry to view Giant Gorilla as the leading advertising and digital marketing voice and marketing communications agency in the hospitality industry. The essence of hospitality has changed, and Giant Gorilla is uniquely positioned to be a leading voice in industry marketing.

What is the message that will move this target audience to action?

Giant Gorilla’s The Marketing Journey hospitality podcast delivers business-building information, insights, and brief interviews – every day.

“Give us eight minutes every morning and we will help you accelerate your growth.”

Program Elements – The Show

The five-minute The Marketing Journey Show will be published every weekday at 8 AM EST.

Giant Gorilla’s COO Nancy Greene and Creative Director Jill Davis will host The Marketing Journey. Nancy will use her past broadcast experience to lead the discussions. Friendly, intelligent banter will rule.

From time to time, the show will bring in Giant Gorilla’s leading thinkers (like CTO Sandy Goddof on TikTok and travel), current clients and guests from the industry.

For production efficiency will gang record five shows every Tuesday afternoon unless there is late-breaking industry news.

The production team is TBD.

What are the support points?

Timely topics will include news about the business of hospitality: industry trends, Covid related issues, what’s hot in marketing, new business models, and a range of discussions on the constant evolution of hospitality marketing, with a concentration on digital marketing.

Great Guests = Traction & Unignorability.

We have already booked interviews with the CMO of InterContinental Hotels; Shake Shack owner Danny Meyer, a very successful Airbnb host, and the CTO of Hotels.com.

What is the brand’s character?

The Marketing Journey is super smart, knowledgeable, and curious – all with a touch of humor.

What is mandatory?

Each show will be broadcast on all of the major podcast platforms and will be supported by individual show landing pages.

Each show will promote Giant Gorilla’s hospitality industry expertise. See The Marketing Journey marketing plan for detailed information.

Oh, Oh… Does Your Agency Need An Action Plan To Get To Being UNIGNORABLE?

Give me a shout to get you there faster. Bottom line? I am like every other advertising agency business development consultant. OK, not. Name one that ran biz dev at Saatchi, owned his own agency, and started two Internet companies? I am more strategic, smarter, and more action-oriented. Also, funnier.

Is Advertising Agency Pitch Pain Deadly?

Peter · April 22, 2021 · 1 Comment

I think that agency management has to ask the question – Is advertising agency pitch pain killing your agency?

I kicked off “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.“, my book on how to win a pitch (still selling well if you are wondering if books have a long life), with a discussion of the hardships that come from running after every new RFI, RFP, and pitch. We are now in a marketing world where the number of client-driven, post-pandemic (well the worst of the pandemic) pitches are on the rise. However, make sure you know which client-based pitch you should go for.

At best, you have a 30% chance of winning. If you are the incumbent, you might even want to bow out fast. The win rate for incumbents is not, um, great.

Pitching Is Good. Pitch Pain Is Bad.

The good news.

The number of clients seeking new agencies is up. I hear this form agency owners, from pubs like Campaign Magazine and pitch consultants including Avi Dan as he wrote in his Forbes article, “Marketers Plan To Shed Even Good Agencies In The Coming Months.” Here’s a tidbit…

Almost all advertisers that I spoke with are considering an agency change. Surprisingly, only a few are motivated by bad advertising. For most, the issue has more to do with the future than the past. As one CMO put it, “Our agency is doing an OK job, but times are changing and I’m not sure they are ready for what’s next. We need a different type of agency, with different skills than the one we have.”

Why are clients looking for new agencies?:

Clients orgs and CMOs are worried. Worried about their marketing programs in light of the pace of digital transformation. And, they are worried about their jobs. Agency change represents some form of quick solution and a sense of progress.
Clients are looking for more and more digital expertise.
Many incumbent agencies are somewhat somnambulant. Their client contact people have not been trained on how to hold and grow clients. A serious training issue that I will help address this year.
Many clients simply have no clue what they need and want. Let’s politely call it being fickle.

These factors, and more, lead to agency shifts. This can be good for the agencies that “get it.”

The bad news.

The bad news is that agencies will need to figure out what business they should pitch. I’ll get right to the point…. do not pitch everything. Why? Do not pitch every new account prospect that comes your way – it will be a waste of your time, money, and – importantly – agency mental health. Have a plan for what the right clients look like and have a budget (oh, and a process).

I offer this agency CEO mantra:

We will not pitch every account that comes our way. The pitch process is simply too costly. Before we pitch any account we will work hard to determine if the prospective client is a good fit for the agency based on a set of predetermined criteria. Here is a start. Is the client famous? Do they respect marketing? Do they actually know what they want? Do they want us to do brilliant work? Will they pay well? Are they a cultural fit?

Hopefully, you can say yes to two or three of these.

The $$$$ problem.

Writing RFIs, RFPs rather time-consuming and expensive. Understatement. Here is a bit from my pitch book’s chapter: More Painful Math. Clearly, your numbers may vary. But, you’ll get the point that not having a business development plan with objectives and strategies is a loss-leading problem.

From The Levitan Pitch. book…

Agency CEO’s and Business Development Directors occasionally use metaphors to help describe their business development efforts. One of the all-time favorites is how similar agencies are to cobblers and shoes. Cobblers do not have the time to make shoes for their children, and too many agencies don’t make the time to run smart business development programs.

Here’s another metaphor.

Agencies (OK, American agencies) often point to the career batting averages of major league baseball players when they discuss the success rate of their new business programs. As they put it, even baseball Hall of Famers are perceived as victorious if they have a career batting average of .300 or more. That’s only 3 hits for every 10 times at bat. Even the great Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson only had a .261 batting average. In agency think, this would mean that the agency would be Hall of Fame material if they won 3 out of every 10 pitches.

Let’s do some agency math using the 1:3 ratio.

Based on my personal experience, conversations with agency CEO’s, and a review of existing data, on average, small to medium agency responds to 10 RFP’s and participates in 6 pitches per year. Your mileage may vary but let’s go with this.

My estimated cost per RFP is $15,000 based on 150 hours of work at a direct labor cost of $100 per hour. At ten RFP’s per year, that’s a participation cost of $150,000 per year.

A conservative estimate of an average finalist pitch, which includes external and internal meetings, pitch management, strategic planning, writing, creative work, pitch design (as in leave-behinds and supporting digital programs), the pitch itself, T&E, and post presentation follow-up costs an agency approximately $35,000. If an agency does 6 pitches per year that’s $210,000.

Obviously, given the size range between multinational networks and small shops, an agency’s mileage may vary but these numbers seem fair for the average agency, and they help frame the issue.

Using my scenario, the total annual cost for RFP’s and pitching comes to $360,000. This number does not include the day-to-day costs of business development. If you add in management, creative, analog and digital market- ing, and business development director time, an agency could easily top out at over $500,000 in labor and outsourced business development costs per year. I am ball-parking here just to get to a reference number.

It can get much more costly. The search consultant David Wethey of Agency Assessments International reports that the average pitch cost per UK agency was £178,000 in 2010. Channeling Las Vegas, as an agency owner I’ve put my own hard-earned cash on the line to win new business. As I write this book, Microsoft just handed their international account to Interpublic. Just imagine how much it took to win that pitch.

Bottom line… an agency could easily spend $500,000 to have a “Hall of Fame” business development batting average of .300. Given today’s decreasing creative services industry profit margins, these numbers could be considered depressing.

Do you like this math? I don’t.

The People Pain Problem.

Pitch Pain is real… Pitching, too often, results in significant agency employee pain. I started my book by quoting a research study of advertising professionals by Provoke Insights that supports the idea that agency employees are dissatisfied with their agency’s pitch process.

“Approximately half (47% of respondents) of advertising professionals surveyed by Provoke Insights say they are dissatisfied with the current internal approach to pitching.”

And, again from Avi.

During the last year I had been traveling all over the country, meeting with advertisers and CEOs, except, for the fact that I’m not actually traveling physically. I’m still stuck at home, in New York, relying – like many of us – on virtual meetings.

As much as pitches represent a chance for agencies to win some much-needed revenue, they’re also an additional cost. Already short-staffed, in light of cost cuts during the pandemic, agency bosses will need to weigh their chances of winning new business, along with the impact it will have, on work for current clients. It can be a slippery slope for those CEOs struggling to balance short-term gains and the longer-term stability of their business.

One more point. Responding to RFIs and RFPs and pitching takes time away from current clients. need I say more?

The Advertising Agency Pitch Pain Bottom Line?

Look, winning new business is good. However, winning the right new business is very very good.

Running after every “available” account is bad. You will lose more than you win. Have a plan and decision-making criteria for what account you should pitch for.

Back to the main question: “Is RFI, RFP, And Pitch Pain killing your advertising agency?” The answer can be a disastrous – yes.

Give me a shout if you want to have a talk about my perspective.

Even More – Winning The Zoom Pitch

I built a video presentation on how to run a winning virtual advertising agency pitch on Zoom. It is guaranteed to help reduce advertising agency pitch pain. Check it out.

13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business

Peter · March 30, 2021 · 4 Comments

I misnamed this 2013 blog post. “13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business.” It should have been named “You are driving marketing directors and potential future clients insane. Here is how to do outbound (ABM) marketing that grabs attention.” Y’all have to get past sending so much ignorable advertising agency new business development messaging.

Talk with any CMO or marketing director or company owner and they will tell you that they receive buckets of incoming business development messages and content from advertising and digital agencies – every week.

The barrage of often ignorable incoming includes these delivery systems: [Read more…] about 13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business

The Biggest Advertising Agency New Business Secret

Peter · February 28, 2021 · Leave a Comment

The Biggest, Most Important Advertising Agency New Business Secret.

It’s Sales Stupid.

Back in 1992, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist said, “It’s the economy, stupid” to make sure the Clinton campaign remembered what was critically important to the American electorate. So, taking my cue from James, I offer that “It’s sales stupid” is the biggest, most important advertising agency new business secret.

An advertising, design, PR agency new business program, marketing materials, presentations (even daily conversations with existing clients), and new business pitches are all about sales. Sounds obvious, right? The problem is that ‘sales’ can be a dirty word at some ‘creative’ agencies. If you think that I am overstating this, take a look at a few agency websites, and ask yourself if they are designed to be high-octane sales experiences that drive leads or just well-designed agency brochures. I think that the Contact page is a number one offender. Contact copy like, “Give us a call” is simply not a romantic way to begin a relationship.

An Advertising Agency New Business Secret

A discussion of how to use the science of salesmanship in an agency presentation could fill a book. I’ll be brief and hit what I think are the most effective techniques we can learn from the masters of salesmanship. Allow me a brief detour first.

I left advertising in 1995 to put a group of New Jersey newspapers online for Advance Internet (the digital newspaper arm of the Newhouse Media Group – you know them as the owner of Condé Nast). In addition to inventing New Jersey Online’s digital newspaper editorial persona, we also had to build an early online sales program that included the design of new advertising units and a sales pitch for this new Internet platform. To help me, Advance brought in Jim Hagaman from the Miami Herald. Jim was easily one of the savviest media salespeople I had ever met.

Within a few days, I had gone from thinking that I knew how to sell (i.e. running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi), to jettisoning much that I had learned, to watching a master actually make sales in the nascent Internet marketplace. Much of what you see below came from Jim.

One of his more interesting sales insights came when I said that we needed to go pitch New Jersey Online to New York advertising agencies. He said, whoa boy. In his experience, agencies always mucked up the sale. They wanted to put their own stamp on the sales message, usually got the details wrong, and always slowed down the process. He said that we were going directly to the clients to explain the benefits of digital media. As I eventually witnessed, he was right.

Actually, here is one more super insightful story that will introduce my next point, which I admit might be a “duh” for some of you.

You have to understand your client’s mindset, needs, pain points, rationale, and emotional motivations before you can ever craft an effective sales pitch.

I learned this lesson at my first agency pitch for New Jersey Online. I figured I’d start with my very own ex, the New York office of Saatchi & Saatchi. I knew the agency inside and out and had worked with their Executive Media Director Allen Banks for years. My pitch included a 1996 hockey puck graph of projected Internet usage and a discussion of digital advertising that touted our newfound ability to track how website visitors viewed and interacted with online advertising. Was Allen smiling? No. His reaction?

“Are you f*cking kidding me? We have made a fortune not really knowing how, when and for how long consumers have been looking at our ads. I manage hundreds of millions in advertising media placement. Knowing how much of it doesn’t work will kill our golden goose.”

My point in telling you this story is that I didn’t think through Allen’s motivations before I delivered my early online advertising sales pitch. By the way, he was right. The Internet sure seems like it killed some parts of the golden advertising goose.

More Sales Advice

How To Get Advertising Agency New Business Leads – The Ratti Report

Peter · February 24, 2021 · Leave a Comment

Ever since running Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising’s new business program + my two internet startup’s sales groups + generating advertising agency new business leads for my own agency + getting people like you to visit this page and then contact me… I have figured out how to generate advertising agency new business leads. So, beyond talking to me, I also recommend that your advertising agency check out my quickie checklist below and Steve Ratti’s The Ratti Report.

How To Drive Advertising Agency New Business Leads

Here is a quick ‘just do it’ list for lead gen.

Make sure that your agency is findable by the clients that are looking for a marketing services firm like you. Are you findable… on Google searches? On the right industry lists? On directories like Clutch?
Go ahead and use B2B advertising. LOL – I’ve heard that advertising works.
Build a new business hot list based on your smart approach to targeting the right clients. Then go out and intelligently, and unignorabily, reach out to the list via savvy account-based marketing. Ya know, direct marketing. And, deliver fabulous & unignorable hard to ignore insights and thinking.
Do the smart social media + SEO thing so people find your brilliant text and video and audio smarts.
Please make sure that your website is actually designed to drive leads. This does not happen by just having a static boring me-too contact page.
Buy smart business lead services and industry databases. Start with The Ratti Report.
Hear Borat love me. I now have video testimonials for my biz from Borat, Gandhi, and Trump (2X). And, yes, moving on from Donnie. But, it was funny at the time.
Read this list of my blog’s 800+ new business posts.

Listen to my podcast interview with The Ratti Report’s Steve Ratti who serves up new business leads every day…