digital marketing

Should Your Advertising Agency Blog?

Peter · February 24, 2016 · 4 Comments

The Advertising Agency Blog? Worth The Effort?

You know all about blogging so I won’t go down the pedantic click-bait road of using a headline like: “24 Unbelievable Reasons That Your Advertising Agency Should Blog”.

But, do you actually know if your advertising agency should blog? Here are the pros and cons and a path beyond running and jumping through the hoops of doing it right… like writing over 7,000 words per month (I made that up, but it’s about right if you want Google to dig you).

Blogging: The Pro’s

Blogging is an incredibly powerful new business attractor tool. Virtually all of my incoming leads and new ad agency clients come to me because I have over 500 well-targeted blog posts… just like this one. It works for me.

What about you?

Your agency blog allows you to self-publish thought leadership on a daily or weekly basis.

Your blog delivers SEO chutzpah to your website that results in more repeat views than your ‘brochure’ website could ever generate.

You have a refined content plan based on agency objectives.

You target the right viewership (as in future clients) with targeted posts.

Your blog is Ta Da… 24/7 national owned media.

Your best blog posts will get shared accross the universe.

Your posts are designed to build your new business pipeline.

Your blog is used to reinforce agency culture and acts as a new employee attractor.

Blogging: The Con’s

Forbes Tries To Stop My Use Of AdBlock

Peter · February 14, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Forbes Does Not Want Me To ‘Continue’ Or… Let The AdBlock War Begin

Interesting find in what I think is the most intriguing thing going on in the world of advertising (OK, one of them.)

Ta Da…. Ad Blocking. Some data from PageFair’s 2015 report on ad blocking.

Ad blocking estimated to cost publishers nearly $22 billion during 2015.
There are now 198 million active adblock users around the world.
Ad blocking grew by 41% globally in the last 12 months.
US ad blocking grew by 48% to reach 45 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.
UK ad blocking grew by 82% to reach 12 million active users in 12 months up to June 2015.

Forbes Tries Anti Adblck

I tried to go to the Forbes website and got the message below.Yes, I admit it, I use AdBlock. Interesting. I guess we’ll see:

If people are willing to turn AdBlock off.
If people want to bother going the extra clicks to read Forbes.
If the use of the words… “continue into Forbes ad-light experience” helps. Ad-light – now that’s a new one.
If other websites follow Forbes down this path.

Frankly, I don’t like barriers to entry. Too many content options out there. As I said, we’ll see where this goes. It is definitely going to be interesting.

See the Forbes message below.

But first, here is what Elon Musk is working on as we speak:

Bing Needs An Advertising Agency

Peter · February 2, 2016 · Leave a Comment

Microsoft’s Bing and Your Advertising Agency

I just took a look at my WordPress referral stats. I was discussing where my referrals come from with the 4A’s ex-Executive VP Michael Donahue who I just interviewed about the world of storytelling agencies. I’ll let you know when I get that up as a guest post on a major advertising news site. By the way, I love guest posting. I also love looking at MY stats.

The stats showed something that I find CRAZY! Back to that in a sec.

Help Bing, Please.

This post is about relevance. I urge all of my agency clients to make sure that when they contact a prospective agency client that they are very clear about how they can help them. I mean help them with some uber smartness that you think will impact an important business issue or opportunity. Your communications should be about how you can help them. Not a random liturgy of how wonderful you are.

Bing Needs Your Help.

What you can easily see from my WordPress chart is that Google rocks and Bing, um, sucks. What could you do with this information?

Well, I’d think about going to Bing and giving them a solution. It won’t be a competitive message, hard to compete with Google. But it could be a Bing-only experience that you won’t get anywhere else. Example? Remember the first time you saw The Wilderness Downtown (which for some of you might be today.) From Chrome Experiments…

Choreographed windows, interactive flocking, custom rendered maps, real-time compositing, procedural drawing, 3D canvas rendering… this Chrome Experiment has them all. “The Wilderness Downtown” is an interactive interpretation of Arcade Fire’s song “We Used To Wait” and was built entirely with the latest open web technologies, including HTML5 video, audio, and canvas.

Note: Bing spent millions a few years ago trying to get you excited about their search platform. Unfortunately, it was way wasted bucks. As you can see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3u7pfDa5yc

Really, WTF were they thinking? JWT made this magic.

If you think that this Bing project is worth the effort, then take a read of the PCWorld article. It can’t be surprising that there is more info out there that you can use to craft your pitch. You could even use my website (or yours) as the start of a discussion.

Advertising Age and The Future Of Advertising

Peter · January 25, 2016 · Leave a Comment

The Future of Advertising

Advertising Age recently ran two very interesting and insightful articles about the current and future state of advertising. It’s that time of the year.

In Part One, I offer my take on what I think are the most salient points in The Industry Speaks: 2016’s Top Priorities that delivered a range of industry leader perspectives on issues and opportunities. I’ve edited the original copy and briefly discuss what it means for you Ms. Advertising Agency CEO.

Part Two comes later this week. I’m feeling too cluttered right now.

One big takeaway… clutter. Advertising clutter, technology clutter, social clutter, content clutter, SEM clutter, even personal blog clutter and on.

Article 1: The Industry Speaks: 2016’s Top Priorities

“What’s the No. 1 issue that the overall marketing and advertising industry needs to deal with in 2016? Advertising Age surveyed executives from throughout the business, and heard a surprising range of answers.

Jeff Charney, CMO, Progressive

Everyone’s so concerned about ad blocking and time shifting, but we see a very different threat. Everybody is flooding the web with their own content, hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute. We’re not just competing with our top competitors, or even other brands outside of our category, we’re competing with people’s friends, mothers and self-made celebrities on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc. And it’s just getting started.

PL: Yes!!! So much stuff. So much competition for your eyeball and ear. I am currently advising an L.A. based fashion agency and have been digging into fashion and luxury marketing trends. The fashion and cosmetics marketing world has shifted. For example, Revlon’s mindshare competition is now coming from personal tastemaker sites like The Blonde Salad — not L’Oreal and it’s Vogue ads. That was Revlon’s old school competition. But, cosmetics buyers attention is now whipped snapped by dozens of new eyeball options.

Martin Sorrell, CEO, WPP

So number one on the agenda is encouraging companies to take a longer-term, less risk-averse view of the world, predicated on the fundamental truth that marketing is an investment not a cost.

It’s clear from BrandZ analysis that investing in brands works. In the last 10 years, a measurement of the strongest brands from the BrandZ Top 100 as a stock portfolio shows their share price has risen over three times more than the MSCI World Index and almost two thirds more than the S&P500.

PL: Ah, the old argument. Advertising spend is a long term “investment.” OK, yeah, we’ve heard this before. But, Sir Martin backs it up with some facts.

Lori Senecal, global CEO, CP&B

Convention won’t challenge itself. As an industry, we need to help marketers really take control of the technology solutions that unlock opportunities to offer consumers truly inventive, additive, and welcome experiences. But clients, agencies, and consumers will only benefit – and our industry will only thrive – if together with CMOs we can control the necessary technology from start to finish.

PL: A nice wish. Will agencies control the technology food chain? No. Will some savvy agencies build their own technology? Sure. but, the agency world will not be in control.

Maurice Levy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe

Mobile and data.