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Smart 2014 Advertising Quote From Mad Men

Peter · November 19, 2021 · Leave a Comment

A Very Smart Advertising Quote From Mad Men

I originally wrote this blog post in 2013 – a year that I published 189 blog posts (a year that my consultancy started to boom). This “Smart 2014 Advertising Quote From Mad Men” post had a brilliant message from Don Draper to all advertising agencies:

The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.

This total factoid about losing clients is why advertising agency new business has to be 24 / 7 / 365. Only the relentless win. Sleep and you will close your doors. I couldn’t come up with a better ad for my business development consultancy. A few dozen + clients after 2013 and I will hammer this point – Only the way actively unignorable win at business development and agency growth.

I highly recommend that you peruse my over 800 blog posts on how to grow your advertising agency. And how to run your business development program 24/7. Here is my list just for you. It is Don Draper approved.

Neil Patel On Advertising Agency Mistakes

Peter · September 5, 2021 · Leave a Comment

I am a regular listener of Neil Patel and Eric Siu’s The Marketing School podcast. As of today, these digital marketers and prolific audio publishers are up to 1,848 episodes (WOW!) that cover many of the tactics and strategies that have made their agencies successful.

Each daily show is delivered at wake up and is approximately 3 minutes long. Bite-sized advice. A recent episode “Mistakes That Neil and Eric Made While Growing Their Agencies” (#1842) is worth a listen (link below). Hey, maybe your agency should produce bite-sized vs. those hour-long podcasts. Like my loooong, but entertaining 40 podcast series – Advertising Stories.

Below is my take on their Neil and Eric’stake.

The podcast transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.

Eric Siu On Leadership and Work Habits:

“… when I first took over (the agency), one of the big mistakes that I made was taking a book too literally called “Let My People Go Surfing”. So some of you might’ve heard this story already, but it’s from the Patagonia co-founder, it’s a great book. And it talks about letting your people go surfing. He lets his people go surfing during lunch, right. Basically, it’s saying people don’t want to be micromanaged, and they don’t. And I went a little too extreme with it and I stopped showing up to the office. So I learned that it’s important, especially in the very beginning, especially when you’re trying to save something, to trust, but verify and also be there in person and be there in the trenches showing that, hey, you’re there and you have some type of vision for the company as well.”

My take. I grew up during the always be in the office days. I was usually the first in when I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi New York and London, definitely when I was the CEO of two digital startups and when I owned my own agency. It was critical that I demonstrated interest and energy – and its good news for me that I have always been a morning person. Sure I know all about the idea of work-life balance, especially when I had two offices in outdoor , fresh-air driven Oregon. But, running an advertising agency, or any business, requires real leadership and dedication. I demonstrated this dedication by showing up. Showing up is especially requiered for client focussed businesses.

Now, how to exhibit this style of leadership in a WFH environment is a bit up for grabs these days. We’ll see where this goes. That said, the last thing I’d do as a leader today is to pump out 6:35 AM emails that ask for an immediate response. That is not effective leadership.

“The other thing is I made a lot of kind of rash decisions without consulting people. And I learned that building actual relationships and building rapport with people and not coming from an arrogant perspective that just because I came from tech I thought that I kind of walked on water, which I didn’t, right. I just thought I was super amazing when really – it takes a village to build something amazing. So that’s what I would say. Don’t take things too literally, build relationships with people and make decisions that are… If they’re reversible, act on them quickly, but if they’re not reversible, you’d probably want to deliberate on them a little more.”

My take: There are a couple of points here. First, yes your agency will work better in a team environment. Even if you are the smartest or most experienced person in the room, don’t act like an ass. If you stop and listen to other people you will generally come out ahead. LOL, most of the time.

Second, it is OK to fail. But, try to do it too too fast and own up to mistakes. That said, repeted faliures are not a good thing.

Neil Patel On Client Concentration:

Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK

Peter · August 8, 2021 · Leave a Comment

Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK.

6 Years Later: My 2021 take on my 2015 ADWEAK take

I thought that I’d update my 2015 (yes, 2015) blog post about the wonderfully endearing but way too insightful and painful ADWEAK take on the advertising industry. I’m re-upping my extremely positive perspective on ADWEAK because they have begun to up their use of LinkedIn so I see them daily.

And, because they talk about themselves like this – like humans:

What began as a fun parody Twitter account has become a full-blown creative studio. @Adweak has grown organically to over 75k followers with an average of over 3 million impressions a month. But snarky tweets don’t pay the bills. Our real job is working with brands and agencies on a wide variety of creative projects. You name it, we’ve done it. We have a shit-ton of experience with agencies (TBWA\Chiat Day, BBDO, Deutsch, DDB and more) and brands (PlayStation, HBO, Dr. Pepper, Energizer and the list goes on).

We’re good, we’re fast and we’re not A-holes.

ADWEAK – Attitude Is Good

Hey, most advertising agencies have little to no attitude & point of difference. They kinda all use the same lingo and would never say ‘shit‘ or ‘A-hole’ in their descriptor copy. There is little attempt to break out of the crowd. I am talking about having a strong and competitive positioning; established expertise and a smart messaging system that makes them unignorable.

Too bad. But, wait, there’s more. Here are some of the painful but all-too-true ADWEAK posts that blast out to their 81,000 Twitter followers. To put that number in perspective, 20-year-old Digitas North America has 66,000 Twitter followers.

Current favs… cause they are all too spot on.

BREAKING: VMLY&R Considers Adding More Letters To Name

BREAKING: After Several Rounds Of Presentations, New Business Client Informs Agencies They’re Going To Hold Off Making Decision Until Early Next Year

BREAKING: Agency Forced To Revise Schedule To One Day For Creative Development, Three Weeks For Client Approvals

BREAKING: Charmin Toilet Paper Challenges Agency To Make Them A “Lifestyle” Brand (LOL< I actually think that Charmin is a daily lifestyle brand…)

OK, I’ll stop. But first. If you are a client looking for different and unignorable, give these guys a shout: adweakeditor@gmail.com

Back to my 2015 Post

ADWEAK joined Twitter in 2008 as @adweak. In case you are speed reading this is not… Adweek, the advertising news magazine [Read more…] about Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK

r/Advertising Advertising School

Peter · June 21, 2021 · Leave a Comment

An Advertising School For You. Yes, You.

A few months ago I bumped into the r/Advertisingschool on Reddit. I’m like = this is a cool, smart, and free online advertising school. All of this, especially smart, being a good thing for the vast majority of advertising agencies who do not do any employee training – a thing from the higher-margin past.

Not to get too far into the old days. but, when I started in the business at my mega New York agency, I, along with my cohort group, had weekly training sessions. We covered how to communicate with clients, how to be strategic geniuses, how to write creative and media briefs, and how to present.

Those were the old days. Days before agencies curtailed training. Now with r/advertisingschool y’all got… Imagine… A free, smart set of courses that even an “I know it all” veteran can learn from. For example, watch the Digital / Social course on YouTube – its below.

Just Do It

I urge you: agency owners; employees from all groups and your “I wanna work in advertising” types to peruse and watch the sessions. Try one on for size. Here is the school’s description:

r/Advertising School is a free portfolio school hosted in Reddit’s r/Advertising community.

The 12-week program features courses from industry professionals alongside real assignments to promote diversity in the ad industry.

Yes, a course. BUT, BUT… you can watch the advertising school course videos at your own speed when you want.

Hey, just go here and check the videos out.

The courses include:

Digital/social
Strategy Account
PR
Media Planning
Design
Brand building
Portfolio

Watch the Digital/Social video as an appetizer… it gets cooking at about the 4:30 minute mark. I have been using and social media thangs since 1995, yes, true. I learned from this one.

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.