ad agency

Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory: Help Please

Peter · January 13, 2016 · Leave a Comment

I Need Your Help: Should I Continue Updating The Advertising Agency Directory?

A couple of years ago I created a Pinterest directory site that lists advertising agencies – the ones I could find. I did it as a way for prospective advertisers to easily locate and compare agencies and as a thought-leadership-oriented-business-development-lead-generator for my consulting business.

As you can see, the directory organizes agencies by city (primarily major cities) and uses a screen grab of the agency homepage and a brief description to help visitors see the range of agencies in each town.

FYI for you thought leaders worried about the time required to thought lead: this directory was very low-cost endeavor as I had an assistant in the Philippines build it using my template and instructions.

The Help Me Please Part…

Today the Pinterest advertising agency directory has well over 1,000 Followers and I get some incoming every month from agencies that would like to be listed or have their information revised. I am going to keep the directory up – why not. However, I am just not sure if I want to maintain it beyond adding agencies that request a listing. I am not sure of its value for the ad industry – as in agencies and clients seeking an agency.

OK, one clear value for you agencies. This is a great way to study your competition in just one place. Agencies change / revise their websites every couple of years. The directory provides some great ideas worth, um, contemplating.

My questions to you.

You can answer by adding a comment below or by emailing me at peter@peterlevitan.com. Thanks.

Do you think that this advertising agency directory via Pinterest is valuable to advertisers and you?

Were you aware of it?

Any other thoughts? Things that I could do to enhance the advertisier experience?

By the way: If you are not listed, would you like to be?

That’s it. Thanks for your help.

Do You Like Flying?

Peter · December 23, 2015 · 1 Comment

Do You Like Flying? Willing To Pay For Less Pain?

“Why Airlines Want To make You Suffer” is a ‘sweet’ article from the New Yorker on how your airline works hard to make you uncomfortable so you buy the longer leg room seat and check your bags. Extra fees rock.

But the fee model comes with systematic costs that are not immediately obvious. Here’s the thing: in order for fees to work, there needs be something worth paying to avoid. That necessitates, at some level, a strategy that can be described as “calculated misery.” Basic service, without fees, must be sufficiently degraded in order to make people want to pay to escape it. And that’s where the suffering begins.

Is this why marketers are ranked just ahead of Congress by American consumers?

So, What Pain Can Advertising Agencies Build Into Thier Service To Get More Bucks?

Hmmm…. grade your AE’s, ECD’s, responsiveness, efficient media buying and charge more for the best? Or, charge on a sliding scale for your Big Strategic and Creative Ideas? More for Tweets based on reTweets? More for more Likes? What other types of pain can you deliver to have clients pay to get better services?

Just trying to learn from United.

Is There Life After Advertising?

Peter · December 22, 2015 · 2 Comments

Is There Life After Advertising? Yes.

FYI: This was originally written in 2015. As of July 2016, I now live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This is one of North America’s coolest towns and I can still run my ad agency consultation business c/o the sweet waves of Wi-Fi.

December 22, 2015. Sayulita, Mexico.

This is a personal story.

I’ve been asked about life after advertising by many of my clients. And, why not. Advertising owners (my case) wonder if and how they can sell their agency and then wonder ‘what’s next?’

Ad workers see that they will probably age out of the industry by their late forties (a fucking huge problem for our industry’s brain drain that is exacerbated by the absurd notion that it’s a young person’s industry. However the BIG fact is that the margins are so slim that agencies can’t afford to pay their older employees decent salaries and associated benefits).

In other cases, people just get fried crisp or get fired and want out.

In the interest of speed, here are my two lives after advertising. If you have a few more minutes, check out my It’s Me page to read a bit more about my global and local advertising and client side Internet experience.

Life After One – From Saatchi to Internet

1995 – 2001. I left Saatchi in 1995 to work for Advance Internet, a division of The Newhouse’s Advance Publications. I was an early CEO in the reinvention of online news. I then went on to found and run ActiveBuddy. You might have played with our SmarterChild natural language bot / app.

Life After Two – From Owning Citrus to Peter Levitan & Co.

2001 – today. After SmarterChild (a long story) and 9/11 (I was fairly close to ground zero), my wife and I decided that we’d move to Oregon (Bend and Portland) after I bought the ad agency Citrus. I ran that for 8 years. I enjoyed selling it. The experience reminded e of selling my sailboat. The two best days were the day I bought it and the day I sold it.

I started this advertising agency business consultancy after I sold my agency and was asked by a couple of friends to help them craft a new business program. Citrus had done quite well. I’ve been applying my Saatchi and Citrus knowledge to help dozens of agencies build growth strategies during the past four years.

OK. What’s The Point?

I took my skills and founded a consultancy. I’m not unique. But, people love it when I tell that I can work from any part of the world (thank you WIFI and Skype). I kinda lucked into this new career, but I recommend that you do some planning because… you will have a life after advertising.

Here are some links that might deliver food for thought and guidance.

Smart Passive Income: Check out the guru on the idea of earning passive income. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income is a simply brilliant how to start a live-anywhere make real-money business. He made $108,000 last month! Online! In his jammies! Ok, not that easy but… read him.

Grow Supply: Ali Mese tells you how to succeed and if you go right here you can get links to many many free tools and websites that will help you build your new business.

How To Sell Your Ad Agency: A link to my blog posts on selling your agency.

The Bottom Line?

Take my Corleone Offer and call me up. It’s an offer you should not refuse and a faster path to —– how to make the cash to get to What’s Next.

My 500th & Most Valuable Advertising Blog Post About Saatchi

Peter · December 10, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Wowzer – This Is My 500^th Blog Post

I started blogging a few years ago to help promote my ad agency Citrus. We were early and, I have to admit, the blog world was a bit less crowded in the mid-2000’s. Today with over 3,000 marketing services blogs, agency blogs have to work a lot harder and smarter. I’ve tried to do just that here.

To commemorate this personal milestone, I want to make sure that this 500th post is highly valuable to my readership – that’s you. After I ramble a bit about what I think are some of my most useful advertising agency insights, I am going to discuss the essentials of my blogging system as a final point. This system works for me as virtually all of my business leads come from this blog as well as LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare and guest posting which are tied into the blog. These social media actions are directed by very clear objectives and are focused on targeting ‘you’ via the use of personas. I can tell you that, if used correctly, social media is a highly effective inbound marketing platform. But, you know that.

I believe that many of my past posts have provided value since they have been read over 159,000 times, have been shared across the web and, most importantly, drive those sweet incoming leads from agencies (hopefully like yours) that are looking for growth strategies.

Here Are My Top Posts

As you’ll see, my second most read post at over 9,000! covers the worst advertising pitch and presentation ever.

“The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever” is about a Saatchi & Saatchi pitch debacle and was one of the reasons I wrote my book on how to run winning pitches. The outcome of this botched pitch was that Saatchi did not win the global Adidas account and I didn’t get to run the account from my very own Saatchi sports agency. Go ahead, buy the book to see all of our mistakes and how to avoid them from Amazon here.

The worst ever pitch blog post is also the reason I put the word Saatchi in this headline. “Saatchi” is serious blog post headline click bait. More on click bait, or better yet, targeted keyword rich blog headlines a bit later.

The Post: The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever [Read more…] about My 500th & Most Valuable Advertising Blog Post About Saatchi

Ad Agency Holiday Cards Cheerful?

Peter · December 3, 2015 · 2 Comments

What Is Really Up With Ad Agency Holiday Cards, Etc?

A Tweet from ADWEAK I just had to echo… Hey, I don’t think that overdoing the advertising agency “creative” holiday message (cute cards, emails, videos) is warranted, necessary, distinctive or winnable. Did I say distinctive? How could it be when every agency tries to look cool in this same-time space? Yeah, I know, I’m being grinch-like. But, just sayin.

My advice. Wish your world a Happy New Year. According to the 2014 Advertising Age Assesment of Advertising Agency Self Promotional Stuff… 87% of advertising agencies spend over 60 hours of staff time doing Christmas greetings but only 12% of agencies do New Year’s greetings.