personal branding

Your Personal Brand and Advertising Agency Sales

Peter · October 29, 2024 ·

You Should Be a Major Asset of Your Advertising Agency Sales Program.

Check out the podcast below.

Today, our personal brand is out there for all to see. We are on LinkedIn, on our website’s About page, in cute Instagram posts, in our new books, and interviewed on industry podcasts.

Whether an agency leader wants to become as famous as David Droga or Gary V or not, they most often have no choice. The market might just brand them whether they like it or not. The key is to control it.

Start with your objective. Since selling my ad agency Citrus, my clear objective has been to be perceived as a leader in advertising agency consultation—primary in the area of business development. I mean sales.

To get there, I’ve written two advertising agency management books, over 850 insight-oriented blog posts, and been on over 75 podcasts—all to help guide your advertising agency sales. As in grow – faster.

Thanks to Google NotebookLM for this podcast.

Oh. My brand… Aqui.

How To Position An Advertising Agency – Part I

Peter · March 24, 2024 · 4 Comments

How To Position An Advertising Agency

Ok, but first: Here is a comprehensive guide the ANA dug that will help your agency become a winner in today’s crazy advertising marketplace – The Advertising Agency Survival Guide.

Part I: The Advertising Agency Position – The Heart Of Your Agency And Reason For Being

An updated look at how to build a smart advertising agency position today… Agencies are wondering how to position themselves in the current environment. I have some thoughts before I get to the details on how to position your agency.

If you have worked on and delivered on a smart advertising agency position in the past couple of years, do not toss it away because it might not be a perfect business development strategy for 2024. For Example, if you ‘own’ the positioning/expertise in travel and hospitality, do not totally back burner that hard-fought-for brand equity—you might have done that during Covid days. But it is back.
Be a very strategic thinker and an insight-driven agency. Be the idea guys. Have ideas that relate to your current and future clients – meet their current needs. Do and deliver market research. Drive respect for your brains. Use this to stay in touch. Truly valuable insights will not be viewed as ass being too ‘salesy’.

Need one simple but, believe me ahead of your compeitive agency curve… do some reasech and thinking abut the new Tik Tok advertising world. And, OK AI.be the idea guys in whatever thing is on a client’s mind. Make them smarter.

One more, why don’t you get one of your folks to start a respeted Tok Tok channel. but, please do not make it about your agency. i have a few ideas. need them?

The Starting Line

.My perspective on this series is that you have to read all three parts to maximize your agency’s benefits. Yup, all three.

Read it all. As Enzo Ferrari would say: “Devi differenziare la tua agenzia. Per fare ciò, leggi tutte e tre le parti.”

Why start with Ferrari?

I think Ferrari is a well-positioned brand (LOL, how’s that for an understatement!). Ferrari is known for its racing heritage, engineering, design, and luxury. Everything they do supports their positioning and, importantly, sales.

At this point, you might be asking two questions.

“What does Ferrari have to do with my advertising, digital or design agency?”

Well, your agency’s brand positioning needs to be as well designed and supported as Ferrari’s.

2. “Do I really need to hear yet another advertising agency business development consultant tell me that advertising agencies need to do a better job of positioning their agencies?”

Yes. Why? Because the great majority of marketing communications agencies look and sound alike. Not sounding like the guy down the street will result in your driving a much more powerful agency

Before I get into the meat of the positioning issue, I’d like to help answer one of the most perplexing questions of our time:

Is the term “Advertising Agency” still relevant?

Top Advertising And Design Awards

Peter · June 19, 2023 · Leave a Comment

A Lovely List Of The Top Advertising Awards

Put yourself in a marketing client’s shoes. They want to find and select a new advertising, digital or design firm. How to do that? They ask friends; take hours searching the Internet; maybe your agency got its account-based marketing down and the client now knows about the agency; the client hires an agency search consultant or… maybe they look at the top advertising and design awards to find an agency that a third party loves. A third party that gave the agency an award and big kisses. In a world of over 4 trillion ad and digital agencies, a client needs some help.

This list provides a list of the top advertising and design awards plus: deep thoughts on why you should even bother doing the advertising award game. This game is costly and time-consuming.

Across my global and regional advertising career, I’ve won big creative awards like the One Show, EFFIES and regional ad awards. There is a system to winning… Here are my views on advertising awards objectives and strategies. It is mindblowing how many advertising agencies do not know how to enter an award show — to win.

Note: This advertising awards list gets updated. Let me know if I am missing an award.

Note #2: I write about advertising awards and other agency and personal branding strategies to make you and your agency more famous in my new book. How To Build A Kick-Ass Advertising Agency

Another note: This is obvious but is worth mentioning. Even if you do not want to send out an award entry, these websites will point you to a great place to steal ‘winning’ ideas.

Advertising Awards Are Good… But, Maybe Start Here: Why Enter Award Shows? Do You Have A Strategy?

Winning the right advertising awards is good for business and agency and client morale. Just make sure you know why you are entering. Too many agencies don’t approach the award process with a plan or objectives beyond the search for ego fulfillment. This can make the whole effort a bit too C R A Z Y. But, you know that. Or, do you? Go here to hear an advertising award judge on his less-than-optimal experience reading agency entries.

I have a memory about the power of awards from my first day at Saatchi & Saatchi London way back in the 1990s. I walked through the creative floor and noticed a tall glass case randomly stuffed with lots of creative trophies. This haphazard display delivered two messages: 1) Saatchi wins lots of awards and 2) they don’t take these too seriously. Of course, the second point was bull shit. Saatchi was always about looking like a winner and the award case proved that point in a cheeky manner. It worked better than the usual and obvious shelf of awards that sit behind the ad agency receptionist’s head.

I have always had mixed feelings about advertising awards. On one hand, they are, like winning an Academy Award, i.e. ridiculous. No one ad, digital program or actor is the “best.” On the other hand (the one with the wallet), they are way expensive. As an agency owner, I often cringed when a creative director came to me with his handout asking us to spend hundreds on award entries.

However money aside, advertising awards have some very big advantages for agencies, clients, and creative-class workers:

The awards celebrate creativity itself. Creative strategies, art, copy and the media platforms that deliver the work.

They help our most talented people get noticed.

They help smart well-designed agencies get noticed by occasionally confused clients who need second party confirmation when selecting an agency. To me, this is a very important point and one that makes writing those increasingly expensive entry checks worth the cost. Awards should be a big part of an agency’s business development program – not just an ego stroker.

To put all of this go-for-it into context, I wrote about the Portland agency Pollinate a few years back that has done very well (!) by hammering Advertising Age’s Small Agency awards show. The blog post, “How To Win The Ad Age Small Agency Award? Twice?” is a demonstration of the value of entering and winning an award that has meaning for prospective clients because it is delivered via an industry-leading publication. Check it out.

Last point before the list. Award judges have told me that around 30% of agencies do not know how to create an entry that is designed to win. Poor copy, poor strategy, even typos. Many agencies rush through the process at the very last minute. Do you? Do you have an annual award plan? Who is in charge?

My Favorite Advertising & Marketing Awards

SmarterChild Beat ChatGPT by 22 Years

Peter · January 25, 2023 · Leave a Comment

As BuzzFeed Said About SmarterChild… (way before ChatGPT)

From BuzzFeed 2013: “50 Things That Look Just Like Your Childhood” – “A chat with an online robot”

Did you play with SmarterChild? I was one of the founders and CEO. Was nice to be part of the Internet’s childhood.Who knew then that ChatGPT was coming?

Here is a start-up video … 2000… (Microsoft eventually bought us – ActiveBuddy. And, now they own a chunk of ChatGPT) Yes, that’s me.

How I Discovered The Internet After Saatchi

Peter · September 9, 2021 · 1 Comment

I Discovered The Internet – Kinda True

This is my 800th blog post. So why not get personal? Here is my story about how I discovered the Internet and left advertising in 1995 to become an Internet start-up CEO. I think that it might be instructive to the people leaving the advertising industry today. Don’t take my word for it, people are leaving – read Avi Dan’s Forbes article, “People Are Fleeing The Ad Industry Because Of Burnout And Wanting To Work From Home.”

By the way, that is a picture of the explorer Robert Peary.

When I Discovered The Internet and The End Of My Advertising Agency Career

After my three years working at the Saatchi & Saatchi Advertising Worldwide London office as European Director running business development and the J&J and Sara Lee Europe accounts, my family and I returned to Summit, New Jersey in the winter of 1994. Our welcome was a brutally iced in house. So iced that we had to hire some off-duty firemen to chop out the ice so we could use the front and back doors.

After leaving Charlotte Street, I now worked at the big black iconic (Darth Vader) Saatchi & Saatchi building on NYC’s Hudson Street. My large 18th-floor office had a wide-angle view and very cool furniture inherited from a recently exited executive creative director. Due to a failed New York office culture, talented colleagues were starting to exit the building.

My job was running Saatchi’s North American business development group. The job was nearly impossible as poor management had trashed Saatchi’s New York reputation and the global brand itself was in decline. The Saatchi brothers had finally overreached when they tried to buy a UK bank. These advertising guys’ “want to buy a bank” hubris was not warmly received by the public markets. Saatchi’s had gone from being the “world’s favorite” advertising agency to a company that no longer got the type of new business incoming and responses I had become accustomed to. Like, I wasn’t getting returned calls from prospective clients. This was a new experience. However, I was getting weekly calls from the trade press asking me for comments about people fleeing the New York office. Not the kind of trade media calls a business development director wants to receive.

I Discovered The Internet

While all of this office and career shit was going down, I had discovered the Internet and its insane growth curve. Yes, I discovered the Internet. Well, this happened because I returned to the USA from the Luddite UK and got the wake-up call.

I immediately fell in love with digital platforms like CD-ROMs, Netscape Navigator (the first commercial graphical browser launched in October 1994), and, of course, America Online and CompuServe. I was also seeing the exponential growth of Internet usage – as shown in the chart. How could this not be a gold rush? This was around the time that Jeff Bezos became enamored with the dramatic hockey puck growth of Internet uptake and you see where that got him. Side note, I had had my first early taste of digital when I briefly ran the Western Union Easylink email account a long time before I moved to the UK. Easylink was the first commercial email service – or as we called it, Instant Mail. Um, yes, a good idea but a bit early. Understatement.

In 1995, one did not have to be a genius to see that the digital universe would become a serious advertising platform. I tried to get Saatchi management interested but they were so consumed by the Saatchi death spiral that, like small children, I could not get them to focus on the new opportunity that was right in front of them. We could have been a contenda.

A Life Switch – “Get The Fuck Out Of Advertising”

Two things soon happened that would change my life.

First, thanks to my prescient friend Mike Donahue, who was the digital lead at the American Association of Advertising Agencies, I found out about Redgate Communications. The leading, and one of the few, digital ad agencies. [Read more…] about How I Discovered The Internet After Saatchi