Search Results for: pitch

12 Ad Agency Presentation Mistakes – Why?

Peter · April 2, 2014 · Leave a Comment

I interviewed Tony Mikes, Founder/Managing Director of the 800 strong agency network Second Wind today (my agency used to be a happy member.) The interview will be one of ten expert interviews that will be included in my book on ad agency pitching. You can see the title I slaved over at the very bottom of this email.

The interview confirmed the sad truth that many agencies are making serious presentation mistakes when they pitch for new business. I already knew this because I’ve talked with many agency owners, agency search consultants, presentation experts and… clients that have sat through mistake ridden presentations. Tony reconfirmed it.

I can’t wait to publish Tony’s insightful comments. They come from firsthand experience when he recently sat on the client side of the table during the RFP and finalist process. The pitch was for the National Aquarium account and the interview with Tony is (pick your word): revealing, sad, unnerving and any other word that you can come up with that describes the lunacy of avoidable agency failure.

Tony hit on the almost all of my twelve ad agency presentation mistakes. Each of these will be discussed at length in the book.

Immediately bore the audience
Don’t have a distinctive message
Don’t have a logical flow
Load up the room with agency people
Bring poor presenters
Don’t deliver any WOW’s
Bring tons of ideas – make many of them irrelevant
Spend too much time talking about YOU not THEM
Don’t rehearse
Misuse PowerPoint
Don’t stage manage
Run out of time

Yikes. As I said, sad but true. By the way, if you search my site for other articles on pitching you will find ones like this: Half of Advertising Agency Staff Hates Pitching. This research was the genesis of my book’s reason for being.

Oh, the title…. The Levitan Pitch: Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

Now, please sign up for my email newsletter below to make sure that your competitor down the street doesn’t read my book before you read it. I want you to win more pitches, not the other agency.

35 Ways To Start & Grow An Ad Agency

Peter · February 25, 2014 · Leave a Comment

How To Start & Grow An Ad Agency

I sat down recently and listed a few recommendations for how to start and grow an ad agency. By the time I finished, I got to 35 pieces of advice. I put 3 below. The other’s are in the mini-Eish-book “26 Ways To Grow Ad Agency Profits Business-building tips from over 30 years running ad agencies.”, which you can get by subscribing to this blog using the form at the bottom of this post. I like getting subscribers because it makes me feel loved and it will provide me a list of folks to alert about my new book on pitching which will be published this spring.

{ You will see that I have narrowed the list to 26 major points from 35. I can’t change the URL (the 35 number) without confusing Google.

These 3 Are From the Marketing Section

Stay very hungry and have a solid business development plan. Business development is a 365/24/7 priority that needs a solid plan, an active approach and constant senior management attention. Too many agencies wait until they lose a large client to reactivate their business development plan. Speaking of plans. Most agencies do not even have a business development plan. Crazy!

Business development plans need to have clear objectives, lists of must have and should have clients and marketing strategies to target and reach out to these potential clients. Reach out, start to make friends and stay in touch. One of my worst new business experiences was that despite my agency’s work for Nike’s national college and Major League Baseball programs and our sports marketing for University of California and Oregon State University, we were not invited to pitch Portland’s MLS team the Timbers because our lead sports account manager hadn’t kept in touch with her friend who was leading the pitch. By the time we heard that the account was available, we were too late.

Think niche. Even if you are a full-service agency, consider leading your new business program with a high-interest niche service or product. The concept of less is more works for agencies as well as advertising messages. Citrus used interest in “invisible QR codes” (that were developed by our client Digimarc) to get us into companies like Nestle and Kraft. We never would have gotten the first meeting with Fortune 500 prospects if we simply said that we were yet another me-too “full-service” shop. A niche-pitch will get you in the door. Once in, work your new business magic.

B2B makes money. Even if you love that sexy consumer work, think hard about working with more B2B clients. B2B is a less crowded playing field; B2B clients have on-going budgets; positive ROI drives incremental spending and smart B2B clients will make you more digitally savvy. I am continually surprised at how many agencies leave B2B work to so few.

Other sections include Planning, Attention to Detail, Client Management, Your People, Digital Chops, Marketing and A CEO Thought. This last section is about the fact that it can be lonely at the top.

Check it out. Don’t forget to get the rest of this document at the bottom of the post.

The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever

Peter · February 18, 2014 · 8 Comments

A Very Sad Story… The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever

This is a story about the worst advertising agency presentation – ever (I know, I was in it.) It was bad.

This special experience, along with more stories, strong opinions, and brilliant advice (I’ve learned a lot over the years) is in my new book… How To Run A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency.

If you buy the 27-chapter book and read it, I guarantee that you will win more new business, run a tighter ship, and will make more money.

My First Advertising Agency Presentation

Back to the beginning: I won my first pitch in 1984. For the first email service.

I was an account executive at Dancer, Fitzgerald Sample, New York’s largest “Mad Men” era advertising agency (Saatchi & Saatchi bought Dancer in 1987.) The pitch was for Western Union’s $15 million EasyLink Service. EasyLink was the first commercial email service and launched the same year as the IBM PC – the times were changing fast. We won the pitch and I learned how a well-oiled presentation worked from a new business team that won nine out of ten pitches that year. After I began working on the business, I asked the senior client why we won. She stated three reasons: [Read more…] about The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever

My First Time. It Was Sweet.

Peter · February 8, 2014 · Leave a Comment

I won my first pitch in February 1984 — so, this is my 30th anniversary of pitching and winning.

In 1984 I was an account executive at Dancer Fitzgerald Sample, New York’s largest “Mad Men” era advertising agency and I used this pitch to gain senior management awareness and a promotion to account supervisor. Dancer also known as DFS, an agency you might not know about, had some small clients like P&G, General Mills, Toyota, Sara Lee, Nabisco, Wrangler and HP. (Saatchi & Saatchi bought Dancer in 1987.)

The pitch was for Western Union’s EasyLink service. EasyLink was the first commercial email service and launched the same year as the IBM PC. We won the $15 million AOR pitch and in the process I learned how a well-oiled pitch worked from a new business team that won nine out of ten pitches that year. One of the reasons we won the Western Union account was our repositioning of electronic mail (yes, that’s what it was called back then) as Instant Mail. DFS was very keen on selling the benefit.

So, just to go back to 1984 for a second. I was three years into my advertising career, I got promoted, I was working at New York’s hottest agency. I was working on one of the earliest internet technology accounts (a reason that I eventually left advertising to launch two Internet startups) and I learned how the Internet was going to transform the world of communications.

Here is how the New York Times reported on the win. get this. There were about 40,000 email users back then. Today? For 2014, Radicati Group projects 2.5 billion email users worldwide.

Advertising Agency Self Promotion

Peter · January 22, 2014 · 2 Comments

Once again, as I research my pitch book, I find wonderful things. This time I was searching Google for images of agency self promotions and I find (on page one) two self promo ads that my agency did for itself when we were called Ralston360 (we were soon renamed Citrus.)

The ads, yes we used advertising to promote our own advertising agency, go figure, used the idea of napkins and ideas to highlight a series of brilliant (if I say so myself) ideas for our clients Legalzoom.com and Napa Valley Vintners (the trade org for Napa’s wine industry.)

Yup, we were selling how good we were at strategy — think ideas. Strategy is the second most important thing clients look for in their agencies. It comes after creativity and just before lunch.