advertising

The Birth, Life And Death Of L’eggs Pantyhose

Peter · June 12, 2020 · 16 Comments

Michael Donahue Has Many Letters to His Name. DFS, S&S, L’eggs, 4A’s, and ANA. Hear Him Discuss The Birth, Life, And Death Of L’eggs Pantyhose.

Michael is going to tell us about how a brand can be born, grow to greatness, and die. This interview covers the birth, life, and death of one of America’s best-known brands – Sara Lee’s L’eggs. Michael ran this account. He also managed to corral ZZ Top and the Radio City Rocketts for the brand’s advertising – two names not usually associated with any brand at the same time. Nothing is forever in brand land.

[buzzsprout episode=’3937190′ player=’true’]

Michael, an original Mad Men man, has been an Executive Vice President and Board member at Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising; EVP at The Association Of American Advertisers and Senior Director Of The Association Of National Advertisers. He is also the tallest man in advertising. And, if that was not all, he did in fact urge the advertising industry in the 1990s to move into the world of digital marketing using his exalted position at the 4A’s.

We will also discuss what the Association Of National Advertisers is and does for mankind.

SHOW LINKS

Watch: Michael Donahue – from the LinkedIn Trust Series at Advertising Week New York 2017

1988 L’eggs TV With ZZ Top

Association of National Advertisers

A nice thing for me… Feedspot has already recognized Advertising Stories as being a top 15 advertising podcast.

Do Not Forget To Subscribe to Advertising Stories Whenever you Listen To Podcasts. Please Tell Your Advertising Friends.

Dallas Advertising Agencies What Agency Is On Top At Google?

Peter · March 5, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Why Is Miller Ad Agency On Top At Google? Why The Answer Is Important For All Advertising Agencies No Matter Where Your Agency Is.

I’ve been doing some work for my advertising agency clients about how they get found by their future marketing clients. To narrow the process, I took a look at how Dallas advertising agencies are listed on Goole’s SERP home page.

It isn’t pretty.

Today is a rather important time to check every “how clients find your agency” box given the current state of the COVID-19 craziness and inevitable client spending pullback. If you were not around during the 2007 recession… ask someone who was. The agencies that fell asleep — fell off the map. I owned an agency at the time and got aggressive – we prospered.

Dallas Advertising Agencies And Google

As part of my research, I did a quick search on Google, via a Chrome incognito browser, to see what Austin, Houston and Dallas advertising agencies are listed first on Google (of course YMMV, depending on your browser and history). I did a fast search as if I was a prospective client searching for a new agency. My search term was simple… “Dallas advertising agencies.”

Here is a screenshot of the results. Kinda critical results for future clients as Google only provides a very limited list on page one.

Dallas Findings

WALO Creative comes up first. They are smart to buy the ad to get out ahead given that Clutch says that there are over 500 Dallas advertising agencies.
Miller Ad Agency is second. They have 75 reviews, so I assume that that helps Google make a decision. However, Slingshot with five reviews is listed as four. So, maybe the number of reviews isn’t the secret.
Finally, I am going like, where is Dallas’ leading Richards Group? They are not on page one. Huh, given their size and history. This time I searched via Google map and Richards shows up as number 4. This makes sense, right? But, again, I am a bit perplexed since smaller Miller is number one.
A “conclusion”. Miller has all five-star reviews as is listed at 5.0. Richards has lots of reviews but because it has a couple of lower review numbers has a 4.5 rank. But wait, Slingshot which is listed as number two only has a 3.4 review rank. Yikes.

My Conclusion… Find a seriously smart, expert SEM / SEO expert and drill down if you want to be listed high on Google’s results for Dallas Advertising Agencies. Maybe start at Google’s Improve Your Local Ranking On Google page. Keep reading – Google’s algorithms are fluid.

One more… make knowing where a prospective client will look for your agency and make sure you are there. If it means that you might have to buy an ad or a listing, do it. The way to get here is to put on a client hat and understand their buyer persona and act like them. Or, have your mom do the search.

Also, check out my article about there being too many advertising agencies. I also have a list of everywhere you want to be.

Note: If your superior expertise can help ME figure this specific Google ranking stuff out…. make contact. Thanks.

Is Domino’s Delivery Insurance Bad Advertising?

Peter · December 2, 2019 · 4 Comments

A quick note before I get to Domino’s and their Delivery Insurance advertising… We’ve all seen the, mostly consternation, at the husband who buys his wife a Peloton bike for Christmas. The issues: husband type gives beautiful wife an exercise bike; she (at 120 LBs kicks into gear and by the end drops three LBs.) PC issues here. People go crazy. Spoof TV commercial goes very viral. But, for comparison on the PC scale, I discuss worker exploitation that stars in a Domino’s TV commercial. Did this ad get anyone’s attention? Well, a bit. But not at the level of Peloton.

I am sitting in front of my TV in Mexico watching Sunday NFL football games. Domino’s is spending some big bucks to show me a commercial about its “Delivery Insurance” where their employees freak out, run around the kitchen, drive fast and run down the street and walkways to deliver pizzas that quite possibly had arrived earlier without the right topping. Holy shit, who can live without their pepperoni?

Domino’s Advertising Problem

Like you, I have seen numerous articles in the past couple of months about how Amazon’s hourly-wage employees suffer injury trying to get you that new pair of headphones within 24 hours. Some parts of Amazon’s warehouses look like slave-driven machines. This hasn’t been a good PR season for Bezos.

Given the Amazon press, do you think that Domino’s Kate Trumbull, VP of advertising and Hispanic marketing has been paying attention to how a major corporation can damage its employees in a quest for speed? Does Domino’s ad agency pay attention?

Take a look at this commercial. Take a look at how the hourly-wage employees, note – average hourly wage at Domino’s is $6 to $11 per hour for a delivery driver (I’ll do the math for you – that’s about $20,000 per year) – is hustling like a fucking NASCAR whirling dervish to get you that missing dipping sauce.

I guess the next question is… does the TV viewer care about the insane Domino’s work system as long as they get their sausage?

Am I being too sensitive?

10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

Peter · March 27, 2019 · Leave a Comment

Do you advertise your advertising agency?

Based on my industry experience, most do not. This means that agencies are not aiming and tailoring their primary sales messages to their target audiences.

This post offers 10 ways to advertise your advertising agency as well as the why you should to it, like, yesterday.

Caveat: You should seriously consider advertising your advertising agency. However, you should first run a smart, consistent account-based marketing program to directly drive agency awareness to your best prospects.

Advertising – A Definition

Just for the heck of it, and to get us all on the same page, here is a definition of advertising. I use ‘advertising’ as a universal term for marketing communications companies.

Advertising is a means of communication with the users (or, non-users) of a product or service. Advertisements are messages paid for by those who send them and are intended to inform or influence people who receive them, as defined by the Advertising Association of the UK.

Why An Advertising Agency Should Advertise

There are four reasons an agency should advertise.

You want to be where prospective clients look for agencies.
You want to put your agency right in front of the right prospects (and even busy agency search consultants like Laura Bajkowski) 24/7.
You want to borrow the interest that on and offline publications can deliver.
You want to prove that you believe in advertising and that you are super creative.

10 Advertising Platforms Your Agency Should Consider

WARNING: Most likely, your agency cannot create and run efforts on all of these platforms. Roll them out based on your marketing plan.

TEST: Test everything. Do more of what works and less of what does not. Yeah, I’m being very obvious. But, testing is the mantra. Your clients want ROI. You do too and running your own programs may make you a better judge of how to judge success across advertising channels.

In addition to listing the ad platforms, I am also giving some, not all, of the reasons that a local/regional agency and an expert agency (example, lead gen B2B agency) should choose the platform. This is meant as food for thought. There are too many types of agencies for me to give every iteration. But, you get it.

Update: It is five hours after I wrote this. I now have number 11. It’s at the bottom of the list.

1. Google AdWords.

Every client in need of a new agency searches on Google. If you are not on page one for the search, buy the position.

Do keyword research and buy the keywords that meet your reach objectives.

Local/regional agency. It would be insane to not try to be on Google’s page one for your location. Example: if you are based in Seattle, buy ‘Seattle advertising agency’ or ‘Seattle SEO agency.’

Expert. Buy ‘Lead generation agency’ or ‘high tech leads agency.’ Do you want Purina as a client? Think about what their marketing team searches on.

2. YouTube.

I have an agency client that produces an interview with marketing leaders every month. They blast them out in emails, on their blog and… yup, leverage the power of the number two search engine to aim their videos at their audience. The agency also retargets. Since there are fewer results on YouTube than on Google, the agency gets more attention (and, yup, these videos also turn high up in Google searches.)

It would real easy for a local agency, most are, to ‘own’ their town’s video world. How about a weekly where to eat in Kansas City series shot on an iPhone?

Need inspiration? Here is john st.’s rather viral video (as of writing it has 2,447,266 views) about the power of Catvertising. Frankly, has any other agency ever had over 2 million views?

3. Advertising Agency Directories.

This is a serious no-brainer that many agencies do not take advantage of. In many cases, an agency directory is on Google’s page one and lists your competitors.

Make sure you are every relevant agency directory and spend the cash if it nets you a higher position or allows you to deliver more information (i.e. your work) and, especially, a link back to your website. [Read more…] about 10 Ways To Advertise Your Advertising Agency

Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling

Peter · March 5, 2019 · 2 Comments

Eeeew, Advertising Agency Cold Calling

One of my advertising agency business development clients asked me today if cold calling was better than doing nothing.

I responded that cold calling is so ineffectual that he might just want to do nothing. Of course, we had a more in-depth conversation about objectives, strategy and tactics — but his question points out that many agency people still employ cold calling. They must think it works.

Cold Facts About Cold Calling

I took these facts from the 2018 ZoomInfo blog about B2B cold calling:

63% of salespeople say cold calling is what they dislike most about their jobs
Cold calling is ineffective 90.9% of the time
Less than 2% of cold calls actually result in a meeting
Less than 1% of cold calls lead to a sale
In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts

Don’t make cold calling an important element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

Cold Information

One more serious point about make-believe B2B marketing. All you have to do to get Sales Qualified leads is to do content or inbound marketing.

As you traverse the world of business development thinkers, you will find people that tell you that inbound is the only way to go – even going so far as saying that if you are brilliant and narrowly focussed you will never have to pitch for business. Sorry, not true.

Today, as has been the case for years, you need to exercise all of your business development muscles and tactics to win.

Don’t make content marketing the only element of your biz dev program. But, you know that.

In and Out

Hey, I have no issue with inbound and social media marketing as I have built my global consultancy on inbound – I get it. My 650+ blog posts get Google, LinkedIn and Twitter action.

This has worked for me because when I get a call from my very (very!) narrow target audience of advertising, PR, and digital agencies, they most likely found me because I am on page one of most ad agency business development related searches. Now really, do you think your agency will be on page one for a search of PPC or PR or general, even local, agencies? Probably not. That’s why you also need to be very smart about outbound marketing. Or, as it is now called Account Based Marketing. Which simply means… find a set of companies that you want to work with and go after them with a very smart, well researched, insight-driven marketing program.

LOL. For years, we’ve called this ‘sales.’

As pointed out earlier, a ‘nerve-racking’ element of outbound marketing is the cold call. I prefer to call it / make it warm calling.

Just the mere mention of cold calling strikes fear in the hearts of the most accomplished advertising agency CEO’s and business development directors. Let’s face it, who really likes to pick up the phone to call a stranger and ask them for something… like their advertising or design account? Um, chances are rather good that it’s not you.

Because of this painful fact, we now have an entire industry of social media experts telling you that all you have to do today to win at business development is inbound marketing. You know, if you blog, Tweet, leverage Linkedin and Facebook, the business will just come knocking at your door.

Really? I don’t think so.

Please note, I am not telling you that a refined agency positioning plus the strategic use of social media coupled with targeted insight-driven content marketing won’t deliver incoming leads. I am just saying that inbound alone is a bit too passive for most aggressive (in a good way to be aggressive) sales programs.

I am sure you know what accounts that you’d like to work for and why they should think about you. OK? So, go get them. But, do not wait for the looong social media cycle to get them to find you. Will attracting the attention of the specific clients you want to work with take time? Yes. But I’d rather be intelligently pro-active than 24/7 passive. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Business Development & Cold Calling