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How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part II

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position an advertising agencyWelcome to Part II of How To Position An Advertising Agency. Here is Part I. It’s a good place to start.

Positioning An Advertising / Digital / Design Agency Isn’t Easy…

I know, I’ve positioned and re-positioned my own agency and do this for my ad agency clients. Here’s what you are up against.

Most advertising and digital agencies do essentially the same things for a living. Once you’ve decided on advertising or digital or integrated or mobile you are up against many other advertising, digital, integrated and mobile agencies.

Most agencies fear not being able to offer all things to all clients.

Differentiation itself may not be all that it’s cracked up to be. “The general challenge for any brand in any market is that what is differentiating is often not motivating and what is motivating is not necessarily differentiating.” This from Michael Moszynski, CEO of London Advertising (more on London later.)

Clients have a very short attention span. They might not spend the time required to read your carefully crafted copy. In this case, being concise would help.

The Power Of A Powerful Advertising Agency Position

[Read more…] about How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part II

Ad Agencies: Who Owns Your Pitch ideas?

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crestlogo1There is nothing I loved more during my advertising career than pitching. I loved the chase, the idea that we could come up with really brilliant thinking and work in a compressed timeframe and the camaraderie of the pitch process.

What I didn’t love was the feeling that I was often giving away our big ideas. It sucked.

To dig into the legal aspects of the issue of who owns your pitch ideas, I interviewed Sharon Toerek for Advertising Week’s blog. Sharon is an intellectual property and marketing law attorney who specializes in the advertising industry at Cleveland’s Licata & Toerek.

Read the post on Advertising Week Social Club.

By the way. I’ll see you at Advertising Week, as in next week, right?

I Love It: Pinterest Marketing & SEO

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I love SEO, Google and Pinterest. As in using Pinterest for marketing.

I am writing a long piece on advertising agency positioning. It will publish in a couple of weeks in time for Advertising Week New York. I’ll be there and will be writing about my thoughts on the speakers and event vibes for the Advertising Week blog.

While doing my agency positioning research, I decided to do some exploration on the idea of advertising agency of the future. My search yielded the search results charted below. As you can see, my Pinterest page popped high up. As I said above, “I love SEO, Google and Pinterest.” Yes SEO-mavens, I checked using other browsers and emptied my cache.

future of advertising agencies Google Search

Finally, A Fcking Ad Agency Blog Worth Reading

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I’m talking about The Escape Pod’s blog.

The Escape Pod

Ok, its not the only ad agency blog worth reading, but, hey, lets face it, how many of these word-rich-self-loving missives ever enrich anything? Ooops, I’m being harsh.

 

In my line of work I read (well, actually scan) a bunch of ad agency blogs. Note to my clients: I actually do read your blogs, I swear it!

Ok, for all of you other ad agencies. Here are some thoughts on what to do and some reasons I like The Escape Pod’s blog.

  1. Please be fun to read. Fun does not have to mean witty (although Escape Pod is witty) — it just means fun (which can also, for me, mean intellectually stimulating.)
  2. Have a (fresh) point of view.
  3. Have a personality. Its OK if your blog sounds like a human wrote it.
  4. Don’t parrot everyone else. We’all don’t need more words on how to blog; the joy of  responsive design; Twitter for marketers; or the post (this is real) -> “The New Landscape of Content Marketing” from one of Chicago’s leading agencies. Note to self: I might err on this “don’t parrot” thing, since this post is about an agency’s blog.
  5. Enlighten me: Like “Behold the Power of  Video Demonstration” does, even if it isn’t what you’d expect a creative agency to love.
  6. Get the idea of Portland.
  7. Oh, and have a really smart kid.

One more point. Have an agency About page that moves the reader.

Bottom line? The Escape Pod is interesting and makes interesting advertising. Interesting is good. Interesting sells.

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Email me – look up and left for an email link – and lets discuss how your agency will never do irrelevant (as in not strategic) blog postings.