marketing

Advertising Agency Recession Freakout

Peter · August 15, 2019 · 2 Comments

Advertising Agency Prosperity During A Recession – Fuhgedaboudit

Is your advertising agency ready for the next recession? Have you been thinking that the current sweet economy that has helped the small and medium-sized advertising agency market to prosper in the past couple of years was going to last forever?

Well, the time has come to fuhgedaboudit.

Early last week a smart agency client of mine asked me about the current volatility of the stock market that is driven by increasingly inept and ill-timed trade war announcements. He mentioned that his clients are getting skittish because they do not have a clear view of the future. Uncertantude is not a harbinger of growth in client marketing, advertising spending and therefore agency security.

Yesterday the stock market dropped 3% on thinking that a global recession is coming. Does this make you feel secure? Even if the market continues its up and down ride, clients will be spooked for awhile.

The Advertising Agency and Recessions

Recessions breed fear and loathing within client ranks. I know this having gone through some major recessions where worried clients lower budgets, stop programs and begin to fire and change agencies. You do not need to hear my personal history. But you should remember the ‘great recession’ of December 2007 through June 2009. The USA GDP dropped by 5.1%.

To be direct, that recession fucked the advertising industry and I am not sure that the industry, as in what it can charge clients, has ever recovered. I won’t go into detail about the recession. But, if you need a memory nudge, watch these two movies again: The Big Short and The Queen Of Versaille.

What Can You Do? Think Business Development Baby.

You know what happens to client spending and loyalty during an advertising recession. What can you do about it other the tried and mostly failed attempts of trying to convince clients that recessions are exactly the time to increase advertising branding and spending.

Well, you should now up your agency to prospect B2B marketing and spending. Get that account-based marketing program off the shelf. That means it is time to market your agency because:

One or more of your best clients will exit through the back door.
You’ve been too complacent. When business is good, advertising agencies think the good time will roll on. Not.
Sorry, referrals will not sustain any agency growth during a recession.
Good news, your competitive advertising, digital and PR agencies have been somnolent as well. They’ve given you a big marketing gap to fill.
“Consultants” like Accenture are smarter than agencies when it comes to managing recessions. They will eat up some business.

The recession is coming. Tomorrow? Next year? Who knows. But, I do know it is coming.

It is time to up your advertising agency marketing game. By the way, this is not my first rodeo. Here is an older blog post on recessions.

My recession marketing reading list. Go forth.

My Recession Reading List…

11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

Peter · June 8, 2019 · 1 Comment

11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools (Updated From 2014).

NOTE: I first wrote this 11 Must-Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools blog post at the very end of 2014 and a few minutes ago the website checker app Checkbot pointed out that this post has a couple of dead links. (4.5 years later and it is interesting to see what tools have survivied). So, I thought that I’d repost and make things work. I suspect a reason for the broken links is that some of these tools are history. Here is what I found.

Back to 2014 – it is still worth the read… Blog post Consistency, actually the lack of it, is one of the most pressing issues that reduces the effectiveness of most advertising agency new business programs. So… Here are some ad agency business development tools that I recommend to keep your agency’s new business and content development program on track. (Tweet this.)

These tools (and there is a big world of tools out there these days) will help your efficiency and, more importantly, make you look like a subject matter expert because you are on that ball. Even better, as you use these tools for your own business development efforts, you will be gaining social media expertise that will dazzle your client prospects.

Clients (the ones you do not have yet) need your help according to this research from Ascend2.

Almost half of the clients surveyed have significant social media obstacles to overcome. You can help them by helping yourself.

This list of 11 tools is my first set of recommended online social media management tools. There will be more coming. [Read more…] about 11 Must Have Ad Agency Business Development Tools

How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One

Peter · May 17, 2019 · 13 Comments

A Strategic Guide To How To Find Your New Advertising Agency Name

This is Part One of a two-part series on how to name your advertising agency (or, most businesses for that matter).

Other than the gyrations that agencies constantly go through with how to position their agency (go here to see my advice on agency positioning); design and redesign their website… how they name themselves is one of their most important branding decisions.

I worked for three advertising agencies. Two were “founder” agencies: Dancer Fitzgerald Sample (remember “Where’s the beef?”) and Saatchi & Saatchi (which bought Dancer) and the other was my very own Portland agency and its “current usage” name: Citrus. Or, as one of our creative directors thought was critical to our success, citrus, with a lower case “c.’

A Question…

Do advertising names matter? Wow, this is a tough one to answer. As you will see from the different naming conventions listed below, how one chooses a name is a broad journey. However, just for the hell of it, here are some of the names for AdAge’s 2018 Small Agency Awards. Do any of these agency names instill immediate confidence? A must call reaction? Are memorable?

Butler, Shine, Stern & Partners
Mistress
Johnxhannes
The Chopping Block
Funworks
Oberland
Walrus (cool website)
Phenomenon
Brownstein Group
Steak
Yard
G&M Plumbing
Spawn ideas
Next/Now

My favorite (at least for this one second) is Next/Now. This name kind of meets a client pain point.

Part One: The Wonderful World of the Advertising Agency Name

I recently asked one of my advertising agency clients how they selected their name (note, it’s a word you use every day in your kitchen.) They said that they went through a fairly random process with the goal of finding a name that was easy to remember and not taken. Well, that’s one way to do it. Another is to apply process. [Read more…] about How To Name Your Advertising Agency: Part One

Google Will Screw Your Ad Agency

Peter · May 14, 2019 · 2 Comments

Google is going to screw your ad agency.

Or, better said, they are going to mess with your organic listing. Which means, that your ad agency will be harder to find. And, therefore screwed.

Many of the ad, digital, etc. agencies I talk with tell me that their SEO is not delivering the power that it once did. Between ads taking top positions, Google’s desire to answer your inquiry right on page one in a snippet (like Google’s answering what the tallest tree is in a two-sentence snippet so you do not even have to go to the expert tree website).

Google is changing, again.

I urge you to go to Neil Patel’s How Google’s New Layout Predicts the Future of SEO to read an in-depth review of what Google is doing/considering. Believe me, this is not good news for you or me since I get the majority of my leads from a Google search.

From Neil: The big trend is that the organic search results have been drastically pushed down below the fold. Roughly by 3.3X.

How does that look? Pretty bad folks. One example… who is ever going to see that blog that you spend hours crafting?

What To Do?

First of all, the benefits of a Google search will not go away. Sure your ad agency might be on page two or three but I am going to imagine that people will scroll down a bit more to see the organic lists. OK, maybe. What can your ad agency do? [Read more…] about Google Will Screw Your Ad Agency

How Strategy and Brains Drive Attention and Sales

Peter · March 7, 2019 · Leave a Comment

The Art Of Strategy And Sales

You are about to read one of many interviews with advertising geniuses that are in The Levitan Pitch. my book on pitching and presenting. You can buy the book from Amazon and I make is really easy at the top of this page. If you are in a hurry, just click here.

But, first…

The Wonderful World Of Strategy From the Effervescent Mind Of Faris Yakob

When I first moved to Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising London in the early 1990s, I had the pleasure of entering the golden age of account planning. Even New York agencies hadn’t truly grasped the benefits of account planners vs. America’s traditional researchers. One of the definitions of account planning is that it brings the consumer mindset into the process of developing advertising. Here are two more definitions that directly relate to most client pitches.

“The account planner is that member of the agency’s team who is the expert, through background, training, experience, and attitudes, at working with information and getting it used – not just marketing research but all the information available to help solve a client’s advertising problems.”

– Stanley Pollitt, founder Boase Massimi Pollitt and wrote the book, Pollitt On Planning.

“Planners are involved and integrated in the creation of marketing strategy and ads. Their responsibility is to bring the consumer to the forefront of the process and to inspire the team to work with the consumer in mind. The planner has a point of view about the consumer and is not shy about expressing it.”

– Lisa Fortini-Campbell, Kellogg School of Management

Earlier in the book, I discussed that the Internet and a wide array of easy to use strategic tools have helped us all become more adept at research and being able to deliver many of the benefits of account planning. That said, being an expert in strategic planning and innovation is a full-time job. Here is one of the worlds most famous full-time experts.

A Strategic Expert Talks

Faris Yakob, Founder and Principle, Genius|Steals and… his book “Paid Attention: Innovative Advertising For A Digital World”

Faris Yakob is the Founder and Principle of Genius|Steals a global planning, idea and innovation consultancy that works on new product concepts, new communication ideas, workshops, inspiration, strategy, content creation, and new ways of thinking. Genius|Steals’ clients include: Fast Company, Grey Advertising, Marriott, Microsoft, Ogilvy (NY), and P&G.

Prior to founding Genius|Steals, he was Chief Innovation Officer MDC Partners/KBS+ and EVP Chief Technology Strategist at McCann Erickson. To top it off, among other kudos, Faris was Chairman of Integrated Jury and Content&Contact Jury at the 2011 Clio Awards.

PL: Do you call yourself an account planner?

Faris: That’s a good question. I have been an account planner, a media planner, a digital strategist, a communications strategist, and I’ve been a management consultant. So I guess, loosely in the area of strategy, I’d say yes. [Read more…] about How Strategy and Brains Drive Attention and Sales