Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

branding

Advertising Agency New Business: Instagram

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My earlier post, “From Traditional To Digital To Integrated To Social To Instagram”, on the advertising blog AdPulp took a look at the New York agency The Mobile Media Lab. As I noted in the post, this agency describes themselves as… “The Mobile Media Lab is a creative agency that produces customized visual experiences with brands and their audiences on Instagram and other social media channels.”

Here is an agency that isn’t worried about finding a niche and owning it. They are not trying to be everything to everybody. Their visual marketing specialty has netted them some famous clients including Evian, Puma, Samsung and W Hotels. Accounts most agencies would love to have. Accounts that a “full-service” Boston agency might have some trouble winning.

Clearly, Mobile Media Lab successfully tapped into a growing marketing area where big-name clients want expertise.

instagram

When I’ve discussed the visual marketing specialty with agency colleagues, they expressed concerns about The Mobile Media Lab’s narrow focus and limitation of tools like Instagram. I have a different perspective. Yes, visual marketing is a tightly focused approach. But, the use of Instagram and Pinterest is skyrocketing and why couldn’t even a large “full-service” agency build a micro-group around niche visual marketing to get new business interest? Just like The Mobile Media lab, another agency just might get the attention of brands that would have never given them a look. Visual marketing is something that can be pitched and should generate interest from sophisticated clients.

Is there any reason that you couldn’t take a niche play to quickly become an expert in a new marketing category? Advertising agency niche markting could be your ticket into the national marketing arena. I’ll soon write about some of the other niches that can be exploited.

How I Wrote And Published My First Book In Three Months: “Why”

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Decide Why You Are Writing Your Book.

If it’s to get rich, you better look elsewhere. Sure, you might become the next Tim Ferris. But, it ain’t that easy.  Bowker, the company that issues ISBN numbers, more on this later, estimates that they will issue 15,000,000 ISBN numbers for individual books in 2012.

Your odds? 15,000,000 : 1. Maybe less as many books are simply garbage.

OK, so despite this competitive headwind, I decided to write a book. Why? Two reasons.

First:

I did some my-life scenario planning. I considered what I’d like to be doing in a couple of years and thought that it would be great to maintain my home-base in Portland but be able to have a very portable means of generating income while traveling around the world. Writing, combined with the growing ease of self-publishing and expanding eBook market, looked like a plausible path. Now, I am not oblivious to the fact that this won’t be easy. But, I think that if I apply my marketing background to writing books I should succeed.

Second: I think that I have a very compelling proposition for my first book. I am going to commit suicide to help add some control to my financial planning; I’ve picked the date and how to do it. My book, Boomercide: From Woodstock To Suicide, covers this journey, my view that I am not going to be the only Baby Boomer to do this (Baby Boomer have the highest suicide rates) and the details of the subject of suicide. Additionally, I am a 30-year marketer and know how to do my research and apply it to a rich subject. My smartest friends, strangers and some book editors have vetted the book’s premise.  All think that Boomercide is a powerful subject.

Now you:

Why DO you want to write? I recommend really getting this objective-driven rationale down so you can really focus. Hey, writing can just be for fun. Maybe you’ve had that idea in your head for years and want to get it down on ePaper. Maybe you really want to launch a writing career. Maybe you want to leave something for your kids and grand-kids. Maybe you see the value in writing a book to polish your personal brand to help your career. There are lots of reasons. But, be clear about this and then just start typing.

Everyone is going to approach the act of writing differently. People with full-time jobs have to go to work; dads and moms have to take care of the kids. Finding the time is hard. That said, find it and get going. It feels great. And, your friends will envy you.

There is lots of advice on the web — start here at Joanna Penn’s site The Creative Penn — about how to attack a writing project. Go Google and drive yourself crazy. But, just start and devote whatever time you can. Maybe its time to give up the NFL or Ellen or even Yoga for awhile. Yes, stop and feed the kids but get going on your eBook.

Visualize.me Adds Colors and Charts To Resumes For Personal Branding

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Vizualize.me is a new web-based tool that easily creates a graphical resume by pulling data from your LinkedIn profile. Its kind of cool and helps add a bit of style and infographic (infographics are hot these days) power to your resume facts. I’m not sure that its a stand-alone tool but it can do a good job of adding additional support to your LinkedIn page and standard resume. Which also brings up the idea that resumes alone ain’t what they used to be. Any reason not to do a personal video? More on personal branding coming up in future posts.

Oh, here is my visual.me/peterlevitan page.