new business

Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google & The Death Of Advertising

Peter · February 9, 2016 · 1 Comment

Does Advertising Still Work In The World Of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google?

According to Scott Galloway, professor of Marketing and Brand Strategy at the NYU Stern School of Business, “The Gang of Four” (Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon) and the new world of digital (I actually don’t know what to call user owned media anymore) are killing your advertising agency. Or, at least dramatically decreasing its effectiveness. Watch the video.

By the way, read to the bottom and see how Galloway helped me to grow my agency.

“Advertising is a tax that only poor people pay.”

Yup, he said this. You have some bucks. Do you watch ads unless you put on your agency “I better pay attention” hat? Do you use an ad blocker? Do you record TV shows and skip the ads? Would you rather pay a ‘Netflix tax’ to watch almost anything and avoid the ads? Yes or no, watch this video. Especially at the 3:00 mark where Galloway shows how advertising does not work (or as hard) as it used to, especially for CPG brands. And, of course, note the tepid valuation growth of WPP, Omnicom and Interpublic.

Back To Me.

Two things.

One: Pay attention to what’s happening in the macro business universe. Clients are and you need to tailor your sales message to overcome, or better yet, leverage what is happening to advertising today.

Two: OK, how did Galloway help me grow my agency? I stole a very Big idea from his L2. Go here and see what I mean at “An Irresistible New Business Sales Pitch.”. I’ve stolen other great ideas to my advantage. Give me a shout and I’ll show you what I mean.

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.

Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory: Help Please

Peter · January 13, 2016 · Leave a Comment

I Need Your Help: Should I Continue Updating The Advertising Agency Directory?

A couple of years ago I created a Pinterest directory site that lists advertising agencies – the ones I could find. I did it as a way for prospective advertisers to easily locate and compare agencies and as a thought-leadership-oriented-business-development-lead-generator for my consulting business.

As you can see, the directory organizes agencies by city (primarily major cities) and uses a screen grab of the agency homepage and a brief description to help visitors see the range of agencies in each town.

FYI for you thought leaders worried about the time required to thought lead: this directory was very low-cost endeavor as I had an assistant in the Philippines build it using my template and instructions.

The Help Me Please Part…

Today the Pinterest advertising agency directory has well over 1,000 Followers and I get some incoming every month from agencies that would like to be listed or have their information revised. I am going to keep the directory up – why not. However, I am just not sure if I want to maintain it beyond adding agencies that request a listing. I am not sure of its value for the ad industry – as in agencies and clients seeking an agency.

OK, one clear value for you agencies. This is a great way to study your competition in just one place. Agencies change / revise their websites every couple of years. The directory provides some great ideas worth, um, contemplating.

My questions to you.

You can answer by adding a comment below or by emailing me at peter@peterlevitan.com. Thanks.

Do you think that this advertising agency directory via Pinterest is valuable to advertisers and you?

Were you aware of it?

Any other thoughts? Things that I could do to enhance the advertisier experience?

By the way: If you are not listed, would you like to be?

That’s it. Thanks for your help.

My 500th & Most Valuable Advertising Blog Post About Saatchi

Peter · December 10, 2015 · Leave a Comment

Wowzer – This Is My 500^th Blog Post

I started blogging a few years ago to help promote my ad agency Citrus. We were early and, I have to admit, the blog world was a bit less crowded in the mid-2000’s. Today with over 3,000 marketing services blogs, agency blogs have to work a lot harder and smarter. I’ve tried to do just that here.

To commemorate this personal milestone, I want to make sure that this 500th post is highly valuable to my readership – that’s you. After I ramble a bit about what I think are some of my most useful advertising agency insights, I am going to discuss the essentials of my blogging system as a final point. This system works for me as virtually all of my business leads come from this blog as well as LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare and guest posting which are tied into the blog. These social media actions are directed by very clear objectives and are focused on targeting ‘you’ via the use of personas. I can tell you that, if used correctly, social media is a highly effective inbound marketing platform. But, you know that.

I believe that many of my past posts have provided value since they have been read over 159,000 times, have been shared across the web and, most importantly, drive those sweet incoming leads from agencies (hopefully like yours) that are looking for growth strategies.

Here Are My Top Posts

As you’ll see, my second most read post at over 9,000! covers the worst advertising pitch and presentation ever.

“The Worst Advertising Agency Presentation – Ever” is about a Saatchi & Saatchi pitch debacle and was one of the reasons I wrote my book on how to run winning pitches. The outcome of this botched pitch was that Saatchi did not win the global Adidas account and I didn’t get to run the account from my very own Saatchi sports agency. Go ahead, buy the book to see all of our mistakes and how to avoid them from Amazon here.

The worst ever pitch blog post is also the reason I put the word Saatchi in this headline. “Saatchi” is serious blog post headline click bait. More on click bait, or better yet, targeted keyword rich blog headlines a bit later.

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