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How NOT To Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

June 10, 2016 By Peter Leave a Comment

How Not To Win While Losing

download loserA friend in advertising sent me the following email. I’ll follow it with some thoughts. I removed names to protect the innocent (actually, not so innocent).

“I read your long blog post, “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program“. Every sentence is worthwhile.

I did new business at Big NYC and Big L.A. agencies, and then at BlahBlah/SF, where it was my sole responsibility for 3 years. The biggest thing I noticed at BlahBlah was that they lost their biggest client every year. If they had shut down the new business operation and had me, or someone like me, be the client retention and client delight manager, the agency would’ve doubled in size just by not losing the biggest account.

What a piece of insight! But, being digital geeks, the principals didn’t like to leave their desks, screenss and their HQ meetings. Instead of wandering the halls of their biggest clients, cementing the relationship and pulling in even more business, they stayed in the office talking about getting new clients, which, as we know, is a low-odds practice.” 

My Unpack

Business Development Is A Must Do

I tell all of my agency clients that they must have a business development plan that runs 24/7 because they will lose large clients every year. This inevitable loss has accelerated over the past few years because an ever increasing number of client assignments are now ‘projects.’ Larger, longer Agency Of Record accounts are becoming scarce. Is the need for a BD plan a secret? No. But, half of all agencies don’t have a sustained sales effort that will replace those lost clients.

Grow Your Current Clients

[Read more…] about How NOT To Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program

Is There Life After Advertising?

December 22, 2015 By Peter 2 Comments

Is There Life After Advertising? Yes.

the-endFYI: This was originally written in 2015. As of July 2016, I now live in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. This is one of North America’s coolest towns and I can still run my ad agency consultation business c/o the sweet waves of Wi-Fi.

December 22, 2015. Sayulita, Mexico.

This is a personal story.

I’ve been asked about life after advertising by many of my clients. And, why not. Advertising owners (my case) wonder if and how they can sell their agency and then wonder ‘what’s next?’

Ad workers see that they will probably age out of the industry by their late forties (a fucking huge problem for our industry’s brain drain that is exacerbated by the absurd notion that it’s a young person’s industry. However the BIG fact is that the margins are so slim that agencies can’t afford to pay their older employees decent salaries and associated benefits).

In other cases, people just get fried crisp or get fired and want out.

In the interest of speed, here are my two lives after advertising. If you have a few more minutes, check out my It’s Me page to read a bit more about my global and local advertising and client side Internet experience.

Life After One – From Saatchi to Internet

1995 – 2001. I left Saatchi in 1995 to work for Advance Internet, a division of The Newhouse’s Advance Publications. I was an early CEO in the reinvention of online news. I then went on to found and run ActiveBuddy. You might have played with our SmarterChild natural language bot / app.

Life After Two – From Owning Citrus to Peter Levitan & Co.

2001 – today. After SmarterChild (a long story) and 9/11 (I was fairly close to ground zero), my wife and I decided that we’d move to Oregon (Bend and Portland) after I bought the ad agency Citrus. I ran that for 8 years. I enjoyed selling it. The experience reminded e of selling my sailboat. The two best days were the day I bought it and the day I sold it.

I started this advertising agency business consultancy after I sold my agency and was asked by a couple of friends to help them craft a new business program. Citrus had done quite well. I’ve been applying my Saatchi and Citrus knowledge to help dozens of agencies build growth strategies during the past four years.

OK. What’s The Point?

1865wu3vpfb9ejpgI took my skills and founded a consultancy. I’m not unique. But, people love it when I tell that I can work from any part of the world (thank you WIFI and Skype). I kinda lucked into this new career, but I recommend that you do some planning because… you will have a life after advertising.

Here are some links that might deliver food for thought and guidance.

Smart Passive Income: Check out the guru on the idea of earning passive income. Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income is a simply brilliant how to start a live-anywhere make real-money business. He made $108,000 last month! Online! In his jammies! Ok, not that easy but… read him.

Grow Supply: Ali Mese tells you how to succeed and if you go right here you can get links to many many free tools and websites that will help you build your new business.

How To Sell Your Ad Agency: A link to my blog posts on selling your agency.

The Bottom Line?

Take my Corleone Offer and call me up. It’s an offer you should not refuse and a faster path to —– how to make the cash to get to What’s Next.

 

 

Advertising Pitch Planning: Tame The Meeting Beast

January 13, 2014 By Peter Leave a Comment

images wildPoorly managed advertising, design and PR agency meetings waste time, kill creativity and cost money. This is a particularly nasty problem in the over-heated world of agency new business pitches.

We know from a recent research study of advertising professionals by Provoke Insights that agency employees are dissatisfied with the agency pitch process.

 “Approximately half (47% of respondents) of advertising professionals surveyed by Provoke Insights say they are dissatisfied with the current internal approach to pitching.”

As a long time agency new business professional, I know that one of the worst “approach” offenders is the poorly managed pitch planning meeting. Worse, poorly managed pitch meetings could lead to losing the pitch itself by making the entire development process less efficient.

The Pitch Leader Must Lead

If you are the  pitch team leader your job is to manage the pitch process so the agency will deliver the best response it can. I’ve always believed that meeting management is the first place to start.

Meeting Management Ala Northwest Airlines

In 1986 I moved from Dancer Fitzgerald Sample’s New York office to Minneapolis  to manage our Northwest Airlines account. I was invited into the client’s inner circle and attended their senior management meetings as the advertising agency representative. These were the good old days when the agency’s opinion on marketing was considered critical to the client’s success.

I quickly realized that Northwest had a serious meeting problem. Most of my clients seemed to be in non-stop meetings from 8AM to 6PM. I couldn’t figure out when they had time to think let alone get their jobs done. This fact wasn’t lost on the CEO who hired a management consultant to help create an efficient and effective meeting culture. It was instructive to watch this course correction help Northwest to be the fastest growing airline in the late 1980’s.

Effective, well-managed meetings deliver three key benefits:

  1. Effective meetings achieve the meeting’s objective.
  2. They take up a minimum amount of time.
  3. They leave participants feeling that a sensible process has been followed.

Meeting Rules

Here are the 10 rules I picked up at Northwest.

  1. Every meeting must have a leader to run the meeting and manage the process.
  2. Invite only the people that need to be in the meeting. This isn’t a numbers game. It is OK for some people to be working at their desks until they are really needed.
  3. Make sure that everyone understands that they are required to show up on time and if they are late they will be costing the agency time and money. Keeping colleagues waiting is rude and costly. Do the math.
  4. Have a clear agenda with meeting objectives. Share it at the start.
  5. Have a timetable. Make sure that anyone needed in the meeting knows of the start and stop time. You should try not to have any open-ended meetings. This is critical.
  6. Consider banning mobile phones. It may be hard to believe that there was once a time when we managed to live our lives without being constantly tethered to our smart phones.
  7. Once a meeting objective is met move on to the next one. Stay on topic.
  8. Watch the clock.
  9. End the meeting when you have covered the objectives.
  10. State any follow-up items, timing and individual responsibilities. Send out a meeting summary ASAP.

The Pitch

The pitch itself should be well stage-managed. These rules should be considered (I stress considered) in how you mange the actual client presentation. Clients will respect you when you show respect for their time and show that your agency is well-managed.

My Pitch

Call me. I’ll help you win more new business.

While you are at it… Don’t miss any of my brilliant (LOL, but I mean it) thoughts on new business.

Sign up for my weekly newsletter.

Gen X, Millennials And Gen Y: Will They Work In Advertising?

December 6, 2013 By Peter 1 Comment

“Are Advertising Agencies Cool Enough For Millennials?”  is a Talent Zoo interview I just did with with Michael Donahue of the 4A’s. The interview discusses the millennial generation and how advertising agencies are going about wooing and keeping this younger generation of Mad Men.

The interview got me thinking about the definition of Millennials, Gen X and Gen Y.

These are demographic terms that we seem to toss about but may not actually be clear about. So, to be clear(er)…

Gen X are the post-Baby Boomers born between 1965 and 1984. Gen Y and Millennials are essentially the same group and they were born between 1981 and 2000. These are the kids, you know the soccer playing, hip-hop listening, Brooklyn, Austin and Portland-bound, kids of the Boomers.

Untitled1And for a lighter perspective, here is how BuzzFeed views the subject:

“22 Signs You’re Stuck Between Gen X And Millennials — You’re not Gen X, but you’re not Gen Y either. Here’s what it’s like being caught in between two generations.”

30% Of Advertising Employees Will Leave In 12 Months

April 24, 2013 By Peter 1 Comment

And you thought that Cannes was just about sun, sand, booze, sex, ads and awards.

From Arnold’s Cannes: Fixing Advertising’s Talent Crisis Campaign website:

The purpose of this campaign was to advertise a speech given by Arnold Worldwide Global CEO Andrew Benett, centered around the “Talent Crisis” in advertising. The crisis as he defines it revolves around improper training and under-appreciation of employees leading to long hours and massive turnover unbeknownst to upper management. These posters were placed around Cannes, in order to drive traffic to the event. They were also supported by postcards with the same creative.

Make sure you check out the poster series.

arnold fixing advertising talent crises

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