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How To Win Advertising Awards Like LONDON Advertising @ The Drum Awards

Peter · November 29, 2017 · 1 Comment

LONDON Advertising Kills The Drum Awards Plus An Interview With LONDON’s CEO To Help Your Agency Win Too

Imagine an advertising agency that has a stand out, highly competitive brand positioning (“One Brilliant Idea”); owns the name of its home city; beats much larger international agencies in pitches for global accounts; makes lovely and impossible to ignore brand-building advertising; and wins buckets of major advertising awards — year after year. In this case, this week’s mega kudos and wet kisses from The Drum Awards.

The agency is London Advertising and after you hear about all that they just won, I’ll share an interview with LONDON Advertising’s CEO Michael Mosynski. By the way, the interview is one of many in my book, The Levitan Pitch. Read This Book. Win More Pitches. [Which is an excellent holiday gift for all your favorite agency leaders or yourself, for that matter.]

This should become one of my best read posts. Please pass it on. Use my cute social media logos.

Some Nights It Is All About Winning

From The Drum – London Advertising was named International Advertising Business of the Year at last night’s Drum Network Awards held in London.

Here is the copy from the agency’s email announcing this year’s Drum Awards. FYI: LONDON is a repeat repeat repeat winner.

A SUCCESSFUL NIGHT AT THE DRUM NETWORK AWARDS

We had an amazing evening at The Drum Network Awards last night. Proud to say we were the most awarded agency, receiving the Agency Grand Prix, as well as winning Agency of the Year for a fourth time.

Our He’s/She’s a fan campaign, for Mandarin Oriental Hotels, won the International Advertising Campaign/Strategy of the Year, as well as International Digital Campaign/Strategy of the Year.

Our work for Mandarin Oriental London, on which we collaborated with Sir Peter Blake, won Leisure & Tourism Campaign/Strategy of the Year.

We were delighted Sir Peter was able to join us on the night.

In a speech to the audience, he said, “seeing my artwork towering over Knightsbridge made me very proud”.

Here is the full list of awards won:

The Agency Grand Prix – Winner

International Agency Business of the Year – Winner

International Advertising Campaign/Strategy of the Year – Winner for He’s/She’s a fan – Mandarin Oriental Hotel Group

International Digital Campaign/Strategy of the Year – Winner

Leisure & Tourism Campaign/Strategy of the Year – Winner for Our fans by Sir Peter Blake – Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London

International Integrated Campaign/Strategy of the Year – Highly Commended – Our fans by Sir Peter Blake – Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, London

Agency of the Year for Advertising – Highly Commended

My Interview

Michael Mosynski is CEO of LONDON Advertising. He launched the agency eight 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 (I was a lucky boy to have worked with him during Saatchi’s golden years).

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?

The Ultimate Test Of A Great Marketing Agency

Peter · November 27, 2017 · Leave a Comment

The Ultimate (Litmus) Test Of A Great Marketing Agency

Smart marketing agencies reevaluate their brand, sales prop and business objectives every year. This evaluation is the ultimate way to answer How are we doing? Is the industry passing us by? Are we set up for 2018 or 2019? Are we happy? Should we change?

Sorry to be so simplistic. But, as you head towards 2018, ask yourself how you will make $$$ (more $$$) in 2018. It’s a great challenge and now is the time for evaluation and planning.

Here are some questions to get your engine rocking.

Do you re-evaluate your goals? Do you have the right staff? Client compensation system? I’d do this on an annual basis. Here is some smart thinking on compensation from down under.
Has your business (what you do) and client base (who you do it for) shifted in the past couple of years (digital would be a change driver)? If so, what planning can you do to take advantages of new market opportunities?
Do you ask your clients for feedback? As in “How are we doing / what can we do to make you happier?” I used the net promoter score when I owned my agency.
Have you evaluated your brand position and sales proposition lately? Maybe its time to morph. Is your market morphing?
Ask what is and is not working with your business development program? I hope you test your specific efforts and platforms? Do more of what works, less of what doesn’t.

You should be entering a time when you can take some time off to clear your head. Read up on best practices, read a book on marketing (I am reading Scott Adam’s Win Bigly;. It’s about Trump and the art of persuasion – love him or not, he persuaded a lot of people to buy into him) OR! just let go for a few hours. Being an advertising agency, design agency, digital agency, experiential agency, marketing agency is always a mix of serious fun and, well, some angst.

Talk

I talk to lots of agencies. Many just want one or two insights – I learn from them as well. Some become my clients, some don’t. I still like the conversation. Take me up on my Corleone Offer. Go ahead, just do it.

The History Of Podcasting

Peter · September 19, 2017 · 1 Comment

The History of Podcasting +

This is my 600th blog post so I thought that I’d be particularly insightful (in my mind at least.) Stay with me as I am about to ramble about me and some business development insights. A bit later, I’ll actually discuss the history of podcasting. But first, some back-patting.

I am consistently on Google’s page one for searches for ‘advertising agency business development’. This in-your-face ranking drives my business. How did I wind up on page one?

My Blog @ 600 Posts

I have posted about one subject = advertising agency business development since January 12, 2013. With this post, I am now at 600 posts. While not totally slavish to my primary keywords of ‘advertising & agency & business & development’ (note today’s Podcasting headline), I have hammed the subject of advertising, digital, design and PR agency business development and sales with short 200 to 500-word posts up to very long 3,000 word plus posts for 4.5 years. Google seems to like the consistency and dedication to providing relevant targeted information.

In addition to being a dedicated weekly blogger, I have effectively increased the amount of my content by publishing chapters from my 70,000-word book, The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. and love using interviews as long-form blog content. Interviews are a go-easy way to deliver 1000+ word content. Interview the right people via audio or video (I use my iPhone, Skype and Zoom) and voila – content. Interviews deliver content that can be transcribed to text overnight via a company like Rev.com. With just a bit of editing, you can easily have very valuable text (Google candy), audio, podcasting, and video (YouTube candy) for your blog and beyond.

Beyond? I amplify my content via my email list, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and SlideShare. This meets my Rule Of Five — get the content on at least five distribution platforms.

There is more to my content marketing strategy including a love of guest posting. However, you will have to take me up on my Vito Corleone Offer to learn more. [Read more…] about The History Of Podcasting

The Best Advertising Agency Website

Peter · September 10, 2017 · 1 Comment

The Best Advertising Agency Website… Sells

I’ve been talking to an increasing number of advertising agencies about how to rebuild their agency website to be a more effective sales tool – to be a best advertising agency website. The operative word here is – sales. It is critical that agencies think very hard about how to funnel a visitor from ‘just visiting’ to making direct contact.

Your website is most likely the first time a prospective client will spend the time to get to know your advertising, design, PR or digital agency. It could also be the last time they see you, and worse, you might never know that they even took a look.

Getting your website right is critical to growing your business. Not setting it up to sell could be one of your worst business development mistakes.

Here are some general thoughts about how to turn agency websites into sales tools. I know that this is timely because most agencies, even ones that just launched a new website last week, are always thinking about their next website. I’d bet that you are too.

The Optimal Agency Website

8 Seconds…

Prospective clients give an agency website about 8 seconds to hook ‘em. That means 8 seconds to describe the agency and give the prospect a good reason to read on. 8 seconds! You know what I’m talking about… you probably give most sites you visit just 8 seconds to tell you why you should stick around.

Once you’ve hopefully sparked interest, clients look hard at agency websites for a clear understanding of what you can do for them (your skills); who you have worked for (proof); past work (more proof), agency thinking (brains); who runs the shop and agency personality (chemistry).

Once you’ve satisfied a potential client’s information needs, you will need to corral them into making contact. After looking at hundreds of advertising agency websites over the years, I can tell you (no surprise) that the great majority do not employ the basics of site visitor conversion. Most agency websites do little more than offer a very basic contact page to, hopefully, help the client make contact.

Sorry, it isn’t that simple.

Some Website Food for Thought

You have limited time to capture the attention and interest of a visitor. How do you do that? Here are some ideas.

Simple Works Hard

I am a fan of simple, fast read design. It’s hard to argue with the power of simplicity. As support, here are some words from the master of keep things simple.

“That’s been one of my mantras—focus and simplicity. Simple can be harder than complex. You have to work hard to get your thinking clean, to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end, because once you get there, you can move mountains.” – Steve Jobs

Here is an example of an agency that not only preached simplicity; it used super clean and direct design to support its very own brand proposition.

See how M&C Saatchi tells (well, once told) prospects what they will get from the agency as soon as the visitor hits the home page. M&C Saatchi delivers its message in about 1.5 seconds. Given the main message, could you imagine the agency having a complicated design to express this thought?

Maurice called the delivery of simplicity: One-Word Equity. This was their pitch from a few years ago. And, there can be no argument that his direct statement still works in today’s over-stimulated ADHD world.

OK, One More Uber Simple Website…

Just to hammer the KISS point, I am including the home page of Playground. It took me 1 second to know what Playground is.

While I am not sure that saying “We are a digital creative agency” is a standout agency pitch, it is, without question, direct and therefore stronger than the front door of most agency websites.

What I Like: Website Elements

Once you have stopped the website visitor with your direct home page message (something compelling via copy or a video), you’ll have the time to tell them your agency story and supply key information.