ad agency

A New Kick-Ass Email Tool

Peter · October 13, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Here’s a new subject line email tool that will increase opens.

I got an email today from one of my favorite email newsletters – Josh Spector’s For The Interested. The email pointed me to omnisend’s email subject line tester

The omnisend promise: Boost your email open rates: analyze and improve your subject lines before sending your next campaign.

I used the tool to create this blog post’s subject line. It scored high.

You can see more tools and resources right There’s more! Here in my advertising, marketing agency resources list.

Is Your Advertising Agency Pitching Too Much?

Peter · October 10, 2022 · 1 Comment

Is Your Advertising Agency Pitching Too Much? Maybe You Need To Say No!

Here is an excerpt from my book on advertising agency pitching and presenting. This tidbit emphasizes the importance of not (allow me to repeat myself) not pitching every account that whistles. You can’t afford it. It costs too much cash, time, energy, and agency staff pain (BURNOUT!). Pitching too much causes one more problem. You will reduce your business development ROI.

There is lots more in “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book Win More Pitches.” You can buy the paperback and eBook on -> Amazon.

Yes, No, Maybe?

Before you embark on a new pitch, you should be asking yourself one extremely important question…

Should we be pitching this account?

I know what you are thinking… Levitan’s kidding right? We’ve made it through the RFI and RFP stages, and now he wants us to ask if we should even be going to the finals.

It’s still ok to say “no”, and now is the time to take a deep breath and review a go-no-go decision. You are about to spend a great deal of time and money. Are you sure that you should go through the next step? Are your colleague’s groans getting louder? Looking in any way ambivalent about the pitch will not help your pitch team feel good about charging into it. Passionless pitches don’t win.

Pitch or not is usually one of the most difficult decisions agency management has to make. There is a good chance that you think that you’ve already answered this question if you participated in an RFP that led to your selection as a shortlist candidate. I believe that even if you’ve performed a sound decision-making process, now is the time to stop to determine if this potentially expensive pitch is worth the time, effort, and human and cash costs.

Are You A Marketing Agency

Peter · September 30, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Marketing Agency or Advertising Agency or Digital Agency?

A few years ago, an agency was called an advertising agency. Then digital came around and agencies began to call themselves digital agencies. Now some call themselves a marketing agency.

What Does Google Search Think? It Thinks – Marketing Agency.

I used Google Trends to see if it could help answer by showing me what people search on. I was a bit surprised. Here are two charts. First comparative searches from 2004 to today. You can see that “advertising agency” once ruled. Today, the second chart, clearly shows that people are searching for a “marketing agency”… Wow.

Is this a definitive answer to what you should call your very own agency? No. But, things are getting a bit complicated.

Yes, there is more to this story. Stay tuned.

Marketing Agency Influencers

Peter · September 16, 2022 · Leave a Comment

Where To Eat and Marketing Agency Influencers

This post is about amateur reviews, the power of influencers as noted by Adweek and marketing agency influencers, and reviews on websites like Agency Spotter.

Some history: I came back to Saatchi & Saatchi New York from our London office in 1994. In both offices I ran business development and ate out a lot. By the time I hit the New York office, Saatchi was on its last legs (as in a company run by Maurice and Charles Saatchi – who were soon “exited” – but founded M&C Saatchi which is arguably a savvier agency).

A thing that hit me when I returned from London in 1994 was this thing called the Internet. I ran around the agency trying to get someone to pay attention but since we were in a bit of a death spiral, I could not excite leadership about the growing digital universe.

While still at the agency I worked with our tech guru to make plans to launch a digital company funded by Digital Equipment. Around that time, I got a call from Tom Florio, the publisher of the New Yorker, who told me that the Newhouse family, the owners of Condé Nast magazines, the New Yorker, Random House and the third largest newspaper group, had this idea of launching online newspapers. I got the CEO job, a brilliant team, and said bye bye to Saatchi.

OK Now On To Reviews

Putting newspapers online in the 1990s was wild. We had carte blanche to invent the formula and the backing of billionaires. New Jersey Online was the combo of the Newark Star-Ledger (the largest paper in NJ), The Times of Trenton and The Jersey Journal. We had the news feeds from each paper, the best coverage of New York and New Jersey’s 7 professional sports teams, the first direct news feed from the Associated Press (a news first), a haiku film critic, Hoboken nightlife reviews, put zoomable cams on NJ beaches, and fab design. We also had what was one of the first set of social media forums – which drove our page views higher than The New York Times online

Ok, I Mean It. Now Onto Reviews.

Advertising People Die Earlier. Why? Job Burnout.

Peter · August 30, 2022 · 1 Comment

Job Burnout Kills.

Job burnout is a hot topic (no pun intended.) I’d like to start with a question before I share some data on burnout. We talk about employee burnout. Do we ever discuss owner/leader/HR job burnout? Imagine trying to figure out how to manage a remote workforce. Hybrid working? Juggling salaries for in-house and out-of-office staff? Trying to figure out if you still need that office coffee system? How to manage a growing freelance workforce?

Have you read about leadership burnout? Can you point me to any data? It is going in my next book in the burnout chapter. Yes, with solutions.

Advertising Agency Job Burnout – Since the 1950s

Job burnout is endemic in the advertising industry (see some history below). I’d even say endemic in most service industries. From the Mayo Clinic:

“Job burnout is a special type of work-related stress — a state of physical or emotional exhaustion that also involves a sense of reduced accomplishment and loss of personal identity.”

For the entire history of the advertising profession, workplace stress (today’s burnout) has been a health concern and worse largely unaddressed.

Here is a passage from Stephen Fox’s history of advertising, “The Mirror Makers”. He riffs on the 50’s burnout. 1950s!

“A survey of advertisers in 1957 found that nine out of ten ad people routinely took work home at night. “What other business has so many young men anxious to break in,” asked one adman, “and so many older men anxious to break out?”

Wait. This Is Crazy. Even More. Now 1956.

A study in 1956 by Life Extension Examiners of New York compared the health of executives in manufacturing, banking, and advertising. The ad people showed up worst in ten of eighteen categories, including high blood pressure, organic heart and prostate problems, and abnormal blood counts.

From 1949 to 1959, at a time when life expectancy for white males was 67.1 years, the average age at death in Advertising Age’s obituaries was 59.9. “It’s a killing business,” concluded Lou Wasey, seventy-one years old in 1956.

“Most of the men who have been along with me in business – they’re all dead, and they were younger than I.”

Wait for a second… I need to repeat this alarming fact…

“From 1949 to 1959, at a time when life expectancy for white males was 67.1 years, the average age at death in Advertising Age’s obituaries was 59.9.”

Good thing I sold my agency. No more Job Burnout for me.

Advertising is simply a very demanding service business that has gotten much more complex from a time perspective with the proliferation of needy 24/7 digital programs.

I’ll be frank. Other than being ready to move on to my other loves, a key reason I sold was to not have to manage a large crew of creative workers. not easy then and I think way harder today.