Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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Smart 2014 Advertising Quote From Mad Men

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A Very Smart Advertising Quote From Mad Men

I originally wrote this blog post in 2013 – a year that I published 189 blog posts (a year that my consultancy started to boom). This “Smart 2014 Advertising Quote From Mad Men” post had a brilliant message from Don Draper to all advertising agencies:

The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them.

This total factoid about losing clients is why advertising agency new business has to be 24 / 7 / 365. Only the relentless win. Sleep and you will close your doors. I couldn’t come up with a better ad for my business development consultancy. A few dozen + clients after 2013 and I will hammer this point – Only the way actively unignorable win at business development and agency growth.

I highly recommend that you peruse my over 800 blog posts on how to grow your advertising agency. And how to run your business development program 24/7. Here is my list just for you. It is Don Draper approved.

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Deliver An Advertising Agency Newspaper

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Really? An Advertising Agency Newspaper. Peter, You Must Be Joking.

advertising agency newspaperWebsites are ephemeral. Social media is like the wind. Email. well email, just fades away. Same for LinkedIn messages. But paper, well paper sticks around. So, here is a suggestion. Consider having an advertising agency newspaper. Whoa… A newspaper? In 2021 or beyond. Yup.

Just to get the conversation going… that’s one of my photography series newspapers over there from my Mexico LaGente photo series.

I Am A Photographer. I Use Newspapers To Give Back.

I photograph communities (and dozens of people) around the world. I have created ‘newspapers’ as a follow-up for photo series I’ve done in San Miguel de Allende Mexico and Selma Alabama. It is a way that I give back to the community. People dig it. I’ve even gotten hugs in Mexico when I’ve given a newspaper to a person that has their photo in it. Hugs. Doesn’t your ad agency want a hug? See some pics of ‘hugs’ below.

Yo, Be Unignorable = Get attention = Creat An Advertising Agency Newspaper Or Zine

Ok, getting past that ephemeral digital problem. Go newspaper, or if you prefer a more modern approach – call it a zine.

Smart words get attention. Groovy imagery gets attention. Smart insights get mucho – repeat – attention. So, if you are going to the trouble of doing all this outreach work to get attention… why not try to really get attention. Go 1990’s and put it in ink. Let people touch your brilliance.

I Use The Newspaper Club

Go to the UK’s Newspaper Club for inspiration and, hey, why not use them to produce your groovy print work.

OK. One More.

Minneapolis’s video production company Current Resident also uses print / zines / newspapers…. whatever you want to call it.

Issues? Sure.

Yes, it is paper. Go green and make it eco-friendly paper.

Need addresses? Now that many businesses are back at the office – at least some of the time – mail is getting delivered to the right person. Or, you know what… ask people for their home address. I often send one of my The Levitan Pitch. books to people. They gladly supply their real address. These days, getting anything in the mail is like Christmas.

Paper in action. Hugs from my neighborhood. A FB post from a community leader.

advertising agency newspaper

 

 

 

Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK

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Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK.

6 Years Later: My 2021 take on my 2015 ADWEAK take

ADWEAKI thought that I’d update my 2015 (yes, 2015) blog post about the wonderfully endearing but way too insightful and painful ADWEAK take on the advertising industry. I’m re-upping my extremely positive perspective on ADWEAK because they have begun to up their use of LinkedIn so I see them daily.

And, because they talk about themselves like this – like humans:

What began as a fun parody Twitter account has become a full-blown creative studio. @Adweak has grown organically to over 75k followers with an average of over 3 million impressions a month. But snarky tweets don’t pay the bills. Our real job is working with brands and agencies on a wide variety of creative projects. You name it, we’ve done it. We have a shit-ton of experience with agencies (TBWA\Chiat Day, BBDO, Deutsch, DDB and more) and brands (PlayStation, HBO, Dr. Pepper, Energizer and the list goes on).

We’re good, we’re fast and we’re not A-holes.

ADWEAK – Attitude Is Good

Hey, most advertising agencies have little to no attitude & point of difference. They kinda all use the same lingo and would never say ‘shit‘ or ‘A-hole’ in their descriptor copy. There is little attempt to break out of the crowd. I am talking about having a strong and competitive positioning; established expertise and a smart messaging system that makes them unignorable.

Too bad. But, wait, there’s more. Here are some of the painful but all-too-true ADWEAK posts that blast out to their 81,000 Twitter followers. To put that number in perspective, 20-year-old Digitas North America has 66,000 Twitter followers.

Current favs… cause they are all too spot on.

BREAKING: VMLY&R Considers Adding More Letters To Name

BREAKING: After Several Rounds Of Presentations, New Business Client Informs Agencies They’re Going To Hold Off Making Decision Until Early Next Year

BREAKING: Agency Forced To Revise Schedule To One Day For Creative Development, Three Weeks For Client Approvals

BREAKING: Charmin Toilet Paper Challenges Agency To Make Them A “Lifestyle” Brand (LOL< I actually think that Charmin is a daily lifestyle brand…)

OK, I’ll stop. But first. If you are a client looking for different and unignorable, give these guys a shout: adweakeditor@gmail.com 

Back to my 2015 Post

ADWEAK joined Twitter in 2008 as @adweak. In case you are speed reading this is not… Adweek, the advertising news magazine [Read more…] about Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK

Sales Pitch Rejection

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Ah, Nothing Like Sales Pitch Rejection

sales pitch rejectionHere is a quickie on the wonderful experience of sales pitch rejection (plus my advice – below) and a bit on the also wonderful post-sales pitch chirping sound, lately known as ghosting.

Thoughts On A Recent Sales Pitch Rejection. Me = Pissed Off. But, Twas A Learning Opportunity

The odds good are that your advertising or marketing agency or consultancy will often be rejected. A decent reason: the prospect is looking at more than one option and your batting average, even a good one, might only be 300% (note, a career-high like that would get you into the Baseball Hall of Fame). You mitigate the art of rejection by pitching the right prospects and the great fact that you are an expert in what the client is looking for. Ok, that said, you will still get rejected if you have an active business development program.

But, what you don’t want is a useless rejection that does not help you improve. Here is one example. And, tell me if I am too thin-skinned.

Note: 100% of my leads come as inbound inquiries. That means that the prospect probably heard about me from WOM or read about me (and read my insights) and made the decision to make contact.

This happened a couple of weeks ago with a New York agency. We scheduled a call, I gave them my pitch, discussed their needs in detail and they asked for a proposal. I sent it a day later and then kinda got a bit ghosted, as in they did not respond in a timely manner – here is a definition of ghosting:

Ghosting is a relatively new colloquial dating term that refers to abruptly cutting off contact with someone without giving that person any warning or explanation for doing so. Even when the person being ghosted reaches out to re-initiate contact or gain closure, they’re met with silence. (Source: Verywell Mind.)

Look, I know that people need to take their time. So, I do not get crazed if I do not get a yes or no quickly.

Follow Up Scenario

To keep the ball rolling, I did my 4-day post-proposal email follow-up and after a couple of more days got a reply from the CEO who told me that they had selected another consultancy because I did not share the agency’s “vision and values.” Now, I usually go, “well, OK.”

But the statement that I did not share VALUES kinda pissed me off. I mean, WTF does that personal to me message mean? What values did we talk about? I then sent this email: [Read more…] about Sales Pitch Rejection

The Cobbler’s Shoe Excuse

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cobbler's shoeThe Shoemaker’s Children Go Barefoot

I hear a lot of excuses from large, medium, and small advertising agencies about why they are not running a long-term, 24-7, active business development program. These agencies often chuckle – a wary chuckle, before mentioning the cobbler’s shoe excuse.

 

You know what I’m talking about. The excuse is that the agency is so focused on its day-to-day clients that they neglect their own biz dev, or better expressed, their own sales program. These agencies act like the way too busy shoemaker whose children go barefoot. “Yup, I’m like really busy making shoes for my customers. Just don’t have the time to take care of the kids.”

Of course. This is insanity. Many agencies touch failure because one of their large, cash-cow clients leaves, and the agency does not have the active pipeline that will deliver the next big account. Insanity. I have never seen an agency in my long-term experience that did not eventually lose a major account.

A Recipe For Business Development Failure Success

Let’s get really simple. This is what every advertising and digital and PR agency has to do. Period. Give me a shout and I can help you create and run the plan that will make these actions happen fast. As in, make those shoes for your kids.

Caveat: Is this radically new information? No. But, this is the blueprint. If you do not do this, then go barefoot.

  • Have agency leadership that recognizes that they must play a major role in agency growth. When I ran business development at Saatchi & Saatchi, both Maurice and Charles dove into pitches.
  • Figure out who is in charge of the day-to-day management of the business development program.
  • Make sure that your advertising agency can get found by a future client that is looking for your type of agency. Just for kicks, start with a ‘blank sheet’ and try finding your agency. Do you stand out from the 4,000 marketing options that are in front of most clients? Have a get-found plan.
  • Have an active friends, business associates, family referral plan. WOM does not always happen automatically or when you want it. You need to manage your WOM outreach.
  • Love the clients you have and grow them. This can not be placed on automatic. Do your people know how to nurture?
  • Build the agency marketing plan. A manageable plan. And, KISS.
  • Have a standout positioning. Being an expert in something would be a rather good idea. Translate this into an “elevator pitch.” You could even carve up your positions and use targeted marketing to deliver multiple messages. You can be both a mobile and a pet marketing expert. Try different landing pages.
  • Know exactly what clients you want and how to entice them to want you. Ask yourself, “why would that client want to get to know me?”
  • Build your prospect lists. And, personas.
  • Leverage Account-Based Marketing to go get their attention. This takes time. Make sure you nail a LinkedIn program and then move on.
  • Create thought leadership that cannot be IGNORED. Please be unignorable.
  • Build a website that is sales-oriented. And different. Drive contacts. Did I say sales-oriented?
  • Use video to sell yourself, your story, your reason for being. Just for kicks, try using paper. Yes, paper.
  • Have a must-follow process that includes plan elements, a marketing calendar, to-do lists, and very clear responsibilities, and a CRM system.

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