Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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Bangkok Food & Sights. What To do When Ads Fail.

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about-markI’ve been to South East Asia many times (first time care of my Saatchi client Northwest Airlines.) My next trip is this fall when I think I am going to Thailand, Vietnam and Laos. I highly recommend this area for burnt out ad people. Two weeks in Thailand or Cambodia will clear out the cobwebs.

My top SE Asia experience has always been eating, especially in Bangkok where you can sample food from all the Thai regions.

For your viewing pleasure I offer 51 Explicit Thai Food Pictures and without question the best video on what to do in Bangkok, “25 Amazing Things to do In Bangkok, Thailand.” Both of these are from Migrationology, which is without question the BEST take on Bangkok. Full stop. Thank you Mark Wiens (that’s Mark with a Durian in the photo.)

Advertising Agency New Business: A Personal Update

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PL-logo-no-tag-hi - subway

Here is a quick update on my business life. I’ll be on a mini-vacation for a few days

I started to spin my advertising agency new business consultancy in late February by loading up my blog with keyword-rich “advertising agency new business / business development” content. Around 15,000 words or so in a bunch of evergreen posts. I supported that with tweets for both my posts and retweets of related content.

I continued the inbound marketing program and now have 184 posts.

These include some posts for my book, “Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide.”

Boomercide Cover Screen-size_d3[1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I supplemented this blog activity with guest posts on the highly visited  AdPulp and Agency Post blogs to start to build authority for peterlevitan.com. I am about to start a series on how clients find and choose advertising agencies for Advertising Week.

I built my agency directory on Pinterest using outsourced help from a great assistant in the Philippines via Odesk. Agencies now send me information on their new websites.

I wrote a couple of white papers on how Seattle and Portland agencies use (or overuse) social media on their websites. I sent Seattle Advertising and Digital Agencies and Their Love Of Social Media and a Portland version to Seattle and Portland agencies. Despite how brilliant the white papers are, I wasn’t surprised that I only got a 5% response (as in, thanks.) Why? I don’t think most agencies are sufficiently curious about virtually anything but their own navel. (I only write this because people tell me they enjoy my honesty.)

I built “The Good, Bad & Ugly”, a review of advertising agency websites and how agencies do or do not do a good job with their interent marketing programs. I gave the presentation in New York to a group of agency CEO’s. I’ve also presented this in Seattle and Portland.

I just ran a Portland Advertising Federation event about how advertising agencies could / should work with startups. I interviewed folks from Wieden+Kennedy, Nike+ Accelerator, Upstart Labs and Opal, a very smart startup that a Portland agency launched. I’ll put up a video of the event soon.

The net.. you may be wondering…

I’ve got agency clients in Portland, New York, Milan and hopefully Mexico (care of a recent discussion.) I’ve worked on agency positioning, agency Internet marketing, the whole enchilada advertising agency new business plan and RFP management. I have been helpful. Or, so they say.

So far so good.

Nerds.com

In the past couple of weeks a team from the USA (that’s me plus one more), Budapest, Scotland and soon Thailand launched a new business based on the power of Nerds (its now in alpha for testing purposes.) Nerds will be a website plus for nerds and the people interested in the nerd lifestyle. Here is a great stat… there are over 2.2 million monthly broad matches for the term “nerds” on Google. This is huge. The goal of the business is to “own” the idea of nerd and monetize it. I’d like to think of the business as becoming a Fab meets Betches Love This.

Cartoon / comics characters might play a large role. We are meeting with a LARGE animation company this week in California. Who knows.

This is my third internet start-up.

Stay way tuned.

Storify = Instant Content Creation For Ad Agencies

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paula_DeanThere is a link to my first Storify story on Paula Dean a bit further down. I created this magnificent piece of totally compelling can’t-miss viral content in about 30 seconds using Storify. Considering how important, and occasionally painful, content creation is, building stories in 30 seconds is a rather good thing.

What is Storify? Let’s ask the Wiki…

“Storify is a social network service that lets the user create stories or timelines using social such as Twitter, facebook and Instagram. Storify was launched in September 2010, and has been open to the public since April 2011.

Users search through multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into stories. Users can re-order the elements and also add text to help give context to the readers.

Media organizations have used Storify in coverage of ongoing news stories such as elections and meetings and events. Poynter.org recommended using Storify for covering social movements, breaking news, internet humor and memes, reactions and conversations, and extreme weather.  CBC used Storify to cover the 2011 London Riots and Al Jazzera has a show called “The Stream” that collects perspectives on news stories using Storify.”

The Paula Dean Story

I am showing the  URL for my SEO sensitive friends.  http://storify.com/PeterLevitan/5-video-paths-to-a-heart-attack-from-paula-dean … its all about Paula Dean (nice use of video, frying kinda crackles.)

My 2nd and 3rd stories are all about the impending Vine vs. Instagram video war. I even manage to get “Hugh Hefner” in one of the stories …. https://storify.com/PeterLevitan/instagram-vs-vine  (Interestingly, this was immediately re-tweeted by the Playboy Centerfold – you’ll figure out which one she is.)

My Storify profile page For Vine vs. Instagram story …

Top 10 Instagram vs. Vine Reactions with tweets · PeterLevitan · Storify

 

8 Vine Ideas For Ad Agency New Business

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I’ve written about the opportunity for an ad, digital or PR agency to leverage the growing awareness and use of Twitter’s Vine, its short-form (as in 6 seconds) video service that runs on iOS and Android, as a new business tool.

I suggested that there has to be an ad agency out there that sees the potential of becoming the first 6-Second ad agency. No, you don’t have to shut down your other services. Just create a Vine division. I think that this could take about 2 hours. Hey, your agency’s new business program probably needs something new to talk about.

Well, here is more fuel. Vines are now shared more often that Instagram photos.

Instagram-vs-VineFrom Memeburn: “According to insights from Twitter-certified analytics partner Topsy the number of Vine posts shared on the site passed the number of Instagram posts late last week, just days after the previously iOS-only Vine launched on Android. It’s an interesting trend, considering the fact that Vine has a much smaller user base than Instagram — it has just 13-million registered users against Instagram’s 100-million active users.For all I know, an agency is doing this.But, I bet that there is still room to grab this tool and run with it. Here are a few thought starters.”

So to help you get going, here are:

8 Ideas For Using Vine For Ad Agency Business Development

  1. Write about Vine on your agency Blog.
  2. Write a Vine (and video marketing) white paper and send it to current and prospective clients.
  3. Run a micro-information-oriented Vine Twitter strategy. Do 3 to 5 Tweets a day for a couple of weeks and watch the stats.
  4. Create a Vine Pinterest site. Think “Best of Vine.”
  5. Do some sample Vine “ads” for client types.
  6. Hire a local comedian to do 6-second comedy skits for your agency.
  7. Get your Vine out: do Vine local reviews of anything: products, services, bars, clubs, bands, dogs, cats (people love dogs and cats.)
  8. Do a Vine about everyone in your agency and add it to your website.

I could keep going but… I’ll save more ideas for my agency clients.

Oh, just in case you need a bit more info, here is today’s infographic.

introducing-vine_5155dc0b885cc

 

 

 

HubSpot, Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

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Only a small fraction of advertising agencies have taped into the power of Pinterest marketing to increase the reach of their business development efforts. More should. To help the advertising world (magnanimous, yes?) I’ve written about the power of Pinterest as an advertising agency business development tool in the past.

HubSpot & Inbound Marketing & Pinterest

HubSpot hubspot on PinterestI was on the HubSpot site today looking for a blog post (Three Ways Foundering Agencies Find Growth) from Agency Post’s Jami Oetting that quoted me – I’ve been getting traffic off the mention –  and I stumbled on HubSpot’s Pinterest site. Its a big deep one. The HubSpot folks, who are clearly dedicated to the power of inbound marketing, do an excellent job of using Pinterest for the distribution of information and as a branding device. I suggest that you take a look at how they are using the site to support their business development program.

The fast, easy to use, visual nature of the site really helps to search for and find some of the tons of social media content that the HubSpot team produces. I think that Pinterest makes it much easier to find what you are looking for and also helps to stumble on the unexpected. Here are some of my favorites:

WonderfulWebinars (especially those of Dan Zarrella and Rand Fishkin)

Marketing Data

Promotion for their INBOUND Conference (including a promotional video that includes Cyndi Lauper)

And…. a review of some smart marketing campaigns (some great charts that you could steal)

The use of Pinterest for business is booming. There are some good ideas here. If your at all flummoxed about Pinterest, give me a shout. Note: This is my Pinterest-based advertising agency directory — are you in it?