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WTF Takeaways From Ad Age Small Agency Conference

Peter · August 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Ad Age Small Agency Conference: Stating The Obvious… Way Too Often

Here are some smart, yet painful, takeaways from The Ad Age Small Agency Conference. I am not surprised at what the speakers say. But also a bit horrified. I mean, what you are about to hear are what I would consider no-brainers for how to run an advertising agency.

No Brainers… That is my What The Fuck. Am I being too dramatic? I don’t think so.

The issue is that these expert takeaways and advice should be ingrained in all advertising, digital design, and PR agencies. Clearly these takeaways are not. But, YMMV. I include some thoughts and links to “helpful’ thinking. Mine.

Not Speaking Client Language. From Mirren:

Brent Hodgin, Mirren’s Managing Director, is focused on language. As in client language.

“Clients are focused on growth and revenue and most agencies are focusing on brand reputation and positioning,” Hodgins said. “And that is a gap.” Awareness “in and of itself is not an end benefit,” he said, because you can grow awareness and still not move one product off the shelf.” He added: “When you don’t use the language of your client … it’s like you are an outsider trying to be an insider.”

The Levitan take. Hey, agencies are selling services to a prospective client that wants stuff. Figure out what stuff they want (gee like more sales and customers and the right analytics + KPIs) and talk their language. Do the upfront research.

Get past typical agency “branding” talk to talking about “sales”. Like ROI.

Some “CLIENT” language from my pitch book:

Here is a quote from an interview I did with Ian Beavis who has been EVP Automotive at Nielsen and ex auto CMO (Kia, Mitsubishi.) He has been pitched by dozens of agencies (and ran the Toyota account at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising, as well)

Levitan: A final question. Agencies have a hard time creating a competitive agency brand positioning. Any insights and advice you can give to the agency world on how to be distinctive in this highly competitive category?

Beavis: You rarely hear of an agency being a business solution provider, as it just doesn’t sound cool or creative. A good agency solves a client’s business issues and is a partner. Very few qualify and even fewer truly embrace this challenge.

Clients want agencies that understand business objectives and business results. They want to hear that you get it. That’s it, folks. This WTF is about not doing the research to learn what that prospective client wants.

Agencies Have a Serious Branding Problem. From The Martin Agency.

How Does A Personal Brand Work? Ask Gary Vaynerchuk & David Droga

Peter · July 29, 2022 · 4 Comments

The Powerful Advertising Agency Building Personal Brand c/o Gary Vaynerchuk, David Droga, and David Ogilvy

I’ve been thinking about the power of the personal brand of Gary Vaynerchuk, David Droga, and David Ogilvy. The power of their brands to drive advertising agency awareness, expertise, and new business.

What is a personal brand? There are many definitions. I went to the website PersonalBrand.com for this definition (why not go to a company smart enough to have bought the URL PersonalBrand?)

“A personal brand is a widely-recognized and largely-uniform perception or impression of an individual based on their experience, expertise, competencies, actions and/or achievements within a community, industry, or the marketplace at large.”

Kinda wordy but you get the idea. My definition: “How people perceive you.”

I am keen on the idea of building and managing a personal brand for agency leaders and senior managers.

One’s personal brand is how you present and control your image to your market – your current and potential clients, your competition, and your staff (and, I can’t stress this enough, your future staff.) Your personal brand puts you in charge of your professional perception and lets you highlight your skills, thought leadership, strengths, and history.

The Advertising Agency and the Power of the Personal Brand

A master… David Ogilvy.

As I’ve discussed in my agency naming chapter, many agencies are named after their founder. In most of these cases, the founder is the face of the agency. The founder embodies the agency mission and soul of the agency.

Ogilvy the global agency continues to use the brand essence of its founder David Ogilvy who passed away in 1999. The agency’s Careers page quotes David and leverages his personal brand to help sell the agency’s creative street cred and soul to future employees:

“As out founder David Ogilvy put it, we seek people who are bigger and smarter than ourselves. That’s how we create a company of giants. We’re always looking for modern marketing and brand experts with big hearts and enormous talent.”

How is this for branding? In 1962, Time Magazine called him “the most sought-after wizard in today’s advertising industry“. Believe me, this recognition did not happen by accident. Ogilvy was a PR brand master. [Read more…] about How Does A Personal Brand Work? Ask Gary Vaynerchuk & David Droga

An Above+Beyond Advertising Agency

Peter · June 10, 2022 · Leave a Comment

London’s Above+Beyond Advertising Agency And…

I woke up, I admit it with a bit of a hangover, and saw that London’s Above+Beyond advertising agency hired Shez Lord has joined as creative director to work on the Subway account. Not big news for me but always good for an advertising agency to get press even if just a typical Media Post News type of article.

I used the article as a spark to wake up my brain and to get me to look at the Above+Beyond website.

Things I Like About The Above+Beyond Website. A couple of quick takeaways:

Good Above+Beyond:

I dig the agency’s name. Above+Beyond works on a few levels. Not the least of which is that the name makes me think that these guys will run through walls for a client. Serice, good agency service, is what keeps clients in-house and offers a good angle for pitching and sales. It would be interesting to see how the agency leverages this promise.

I dig the opening statement: Audience Age Creativity For Ambitious Brands. I admit that it took me a couple of seconds to process the term “Audience Age”. However, once I got my fuzzy brain to think, I liked that Above+Beyond recognizes the power of the audience these days and positions the agency dead center in this evolving universe… Oh, and I’ve had personal experience with “ambitious”. I started in the agency business at New York’s largest ad agency — Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (later bought by Saatchi) which had Ambitious Advertising as its ‘motto’.

I like that the agency defines its clients as being ambitious. Most agencies do not define the clients that they want.

The ‘work’ is smart. The Sh*t Just Got Serious client has a nice story about connecting your bum to trees.

A new brand to fight deforestation, one 100% recycled loo-roll at a time.

Serious Tissues was named to insinuate the serious issues our world faces with the devastating effects of climate change. A world where we’re chopping down 27,000 trees a day just to wipe our arses. Literally flushing away 10m trees each year. The proposition was simple and distinct; for every one recycled toilet roll bought from Serious Tissues – one tree is planted.

Nice client list.

A Better Above+Beyond:

I don’t dig that the agency only uses video for its cases. I’d like to get to know the agency leaders… why not a video with them in it? A short but sweet chemistry-building video? Like… tell me who you are. And, why I should hire you vs the other ‘creative’ shop down the street.

I really could use some explanation surrounding the idea of “Audience Age”. Help me want to use the agency in this new world where the consumer rules (even more everyday). Audience-related strategic insights please. Even short and very sweet audience as in consumer interviews. I said short.

Ok, one more. These guys could do a better job of enticing me to make contact. Most agencies do a sh*ty job when it comes to their contact page. Above+Beyond, how about some love? And a hug.

Look at my Contact page.

I have an offer (as in Don Corleone); make contacting me easy and even have a testimonial from a couple of my clients and even even a video testimonial from my boy Mahatma Gandhi. Yes, Gandhi. I got my friend Gandhi to do the video because I am ambitious – like Above+Beyond’s favorite clients.

An Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy

Peter · May 22, 2022 · Leave a Comment

I started blogging in the early 2000s. I really cranked it up after I sold my advertising agency and became an advertising agency business development consultant. Below is a list of my blog posts. The subject matter of these hundreds of blog posts reflects my dedication to having an optimized search engine blog strategy. It worked.

My Optimized Search Engine Blog Strategy.

I am going to keep this easy. I could ramble on but these are the core elements of my blog strategy.

Understand your objectives. Mine is to entice advertising agency leadership to contact me about helping them develop an unignorable business development program. This has worked for me every week.
Understand and meet the needs of your market. You are writing for them. Example: My evergreen list that is just for advertising execs… Top Advertising and Design Awards.
Use all available SEO tools to help you determine trending subject matter and keywords. There are a bunch of tools listed on my advertising agency resources list.
Study your direct competition. What are they writing about? What are their best keywords?
Be consistent. As you can see, I have written, on average, over one post per week. In 2013 alone (when I wanted to really drive Google love), I wrote 188 blog posts.
Have your very own voice. Write with gusto,
Amplify the reach/frequency of your blog posts: post em on LinkedIn; use them in your agency’s email newsletter; send them directly to clients and prospects (even try paper), and on…
Go mega amplification. I am going to use some of these very best Levitan blog posts to form the basis of my new book.

OK – Here You Go… Levitan’s 750 Plus Blog Post Archive

An Advertising Agency Survival Guide

Peter · May 16, 2022 · 3 Comments

The Advertising Agency Survival Guide. 2022 “Recession” Version.

I am republishing and updating my pandemic Advertising Agency Survival Guide blog post. It was originally written in 2020 when we all realized that we were heading into some Covidland hell. At that time, The Association of National Advertisers, the ANA, passed the article along to its membership. Why am I modifying the article for 2022? Because I think (not alone here) that we are heading to some form of recession. Recessions are not great for advertising agencies as marketing is one of the first line items that clients cut from their budgets.

Note: While we are not sure if a recession is heading our way, we do know that company valuations are down and that is not a good thing for marketing budgets. The odds on their being that full-blown recession … This from Bloomberg.

The probability of a recession over the next 12 months is now 30%, the highest since 2020, according to the latest Bloomberg monthly survey of economists. That’s up slightly from 27.5% in April and double the odds economists predicted just three months ago.

This from ADWEEK on Sir Martin Sorrell:

S4 Capital issued its 2021 Annual Report this week and company executive chairman Martin Sorrell in his letter to shareholders strenuously sought to manage growth expectations given recent huge reversals on the macroeconomic front.

Sorrell said that events and circumstances have developed to create a “perfect storm” that will dampen the “strong bounce-back previously expected this year and over the horizon in 2023 the clouds look even darker.”

Sorrell noted that GDP forecasts have recently been cut by the IMF and others to 3.6% from 5% just six months ago. “Less robust economic growth is important as it’s one of the drivers of S4 Capital’s growth,” Sorrell cautioned.

At S4 Capital, Sorrell added, “we’ll trim our sails accordingly and won’t be blown off course. But navigation will as ever, be challenging.”

Tough Question. Will Your Advertising Agency Survive This New Recession?

Here is my educated take on how advertising agencies will survive the big dip and how they will make lifeforce happen. It is my take on an Advertising Agency Survival Guide.

Having gone through the 2007 – 2008 recession as an agency owner, I saw approximately one-third of advertising agencies shrivel. My current survival advice is based on my having navigated financial storms as well as recent deep conversations with small and medium-sized agencies. I did not choose to rush out these thoughts. I actually thought about my thoughts. LOL.

Plus, this article is not short and sweet. You will actually have to read all of it. OK, it is sweet.

Two Quick & Very Important Points.

How long will the shit-storm last? I am talking about the inevitable/impending reduction in client spending.

Like you, I have no clue when any semblance of normality will return. I have to assume it will. Plan accordingly.

Chamath Palihapitiya is one of my most respected “advisors”. He has said that companies should be able to adjust and make new plans to survive 36 months. 36! Yes.

He says, think like this is a form of depression. Whoa. Yikes. Are you ready?

This is what I do know… If you want to be in the top 1/3, you can’t lose all or even some marketing energy or brand awareness. Why make your voyage back to the land of happy clients too uphill?

You will get my marketing recommendations below. But first, the big question.

Will Your Advertising Agency Fail?

Here is what an advertising agency principle should be doing right now. I admit that this is generalized given the diversity of the types of advertising agencies. But generalized does not mean its not an effective how-to for virtually any agency.

First – Two Definitions

“Advertising Agency”: This is my universal term for most types of communications marketing firms.
“The Good Client”: A client is a company that has consistently used any form of advertising or digital marketing. In your case, it is a client that meets your target criteria (you have that, right) and you think would want to hire you.

OK, Advertising Agency… What Are You Going To Do About it?

I am going to be tough here. At least 30% of advertising agencies will fail or falter in the next twelve to eighteen months.

This post provides my take on how to survive. For the winners, how to set yourself up for growth.

6 Advertising Agency Pain Points – I Know You Know This. But, It Is Worth Restating.

Your current and future clients are starting to freak out. This goes from their business perspective (increases in consumer debt, lower spending by their B2C or B2B customers, that supply chain pain) and their own worries about their life savings.
Some current clients have already reduced or canceled advertising and project spend.
Growing agency profitability has been getting more difficult.
You could be too slow in managing your costs.
Agencies, too many, are already poorly positioned, do not stand out, and worse, are unbelievably ignorable.
Many prospective clients “probably” do not want to hear from you. Well, they might if you have the right messaging.

Advertising Agency Survival Guide Strategies

I know what I am talking about. I’ve won and lost. My advertising agency survived the 2007-2008 recession. My $30 million VC funded ActiveBuddy digital business did not survive the 2001 dot-com bust. Don’t feel bad for me, Microsoft eventually bought our technology.