Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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Advertising Agency Self Promotion

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Once again, as I research my pitch book, I find wonderful things. This time I was searching Google for images of agency self promotions and I find (on page one) two self promo ads that my agency did for itself when we were called Ralston360 (we were soon renamed Citrus.)

The ads, yes we used advertising to promote our own advertising agency, go figure, used the idea of napkins and ideas to highlight a series of brilliant (if I say so myself) ideas for our clients Legalzoom.com and Napa Valley Vintners (the trade org for Napa’s wine industry.)

Yup, we were selling how good we were at strategy — think ideas. Strategy is the second most important thing clients look for in their agencies. It comes after creativity and just before lunch.

ad agency self promotion 2 Google Search

The Sweet “Why’s” of Online Video

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emarketer online video advertisingAccording to eMarketer, advertisers are using online video for awareness and branding. No surprise there. This is how “commercials” have been used for years.

Read on…

So, What Are The Sweet Why’s?

  1. The use of online brand video as “old-fashioned” TV commercials is why agencies that know how to write and produce TV commercials have a leg up on the young digital upstarts.
  2. The use of online brand video is why young upstart agencies need to begin to act like old-fashioned TV advertisers. I often hear newish digital agencies ask, “how do I do TV advertising?”

What goes around goes around.

OK, one more thing. Remember when the digital guys said that interruption advertising was dead. Well, guess what, it ain’t. Just try to watch a video on YouTube without a commercial interruption.

OK, OK. Sure things will change. And, yes the TV creative director generation will die off. But, it will be a slow death. Why? TV commercials WORK!

The History Of Content Marketing

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Yesterday I opined (yes, a Bill O’Riellyism) that we shouldn’t get all caught up in worrying about the definition of advertising. In my head, lets keep our lives simple and just believe that when marketers pay for our attention they are “advertising.”

I sited content marketing as not being a brand new “advertising” idea (think advertorials) and today found this infographic on the history of content marketing on the Content Marketing Institute website. So, how old is content marketing… Try 1885.

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Advertising Is, Well, Advertising

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It’s Called Advertising ‹ Advertising Week Social ClubHere is my latest post for Advertising Week Social Club, Advertising Week’s blog.

The post discusses my take on what advertising means today. There seems to be quite a bit of confusion since the introduction of digital media platforms, social and mobile. But, I think that advertising continues to be about brands spending money to get consumer’s attention regardless of the platform. Here’s Wikipedia’s definition of advertising. I don’t see why Twitter, iPhone apps or content marketing doesn’t fit in.

“Advertising is a form of communication for marketing and is used to encourage, persuade, or manipulate an audience   (viewers, readers or listeners; sometimes a specific group) to continue or take some new action.”

For a bit more on this, head over to my post on how to position advertising agencies. I use some Google stats to help understand the value of the word “advertising.”