Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
Join me and my very close friends Martha Stewart, Malcolm Gladwell and Guy Kawasaki at Inbound 2014 in sunny Boston this September…
* I will be speaking on how advertising agencies should think real hard about the value of writing a book. Ogilvy did it. M&C Saatchi did it. Jerry did it. Jon Steel did it. And, I wrote my soon to be released The Levitan Pitch. in only 6 months.
I wrote about the power of guest posting recently. Here is my latest guest post on the Advertising Week blog. The post is all about why advertising, digital, design and PR agencies need to put their agency story up on their website using = an agency video.
The genesis of the post is based on insights gathered from my book. Virtually everyone I talked with (agency CEO’s, clients, agency search consultants) say that interpersonal agency to client chemistry is a key factor in agency selection. My point — start building chemistry with you website.
Yikes, there are more truths about ad agency new business pitching in this video than I’d like to admit. Well, um, OK, I admit it.
OK, I admit it. I am fibbing.
There is no reason that an advertising agency shouldn’t always be executing some form of business development activity. While you might want to slow down on outreach during the summer (but, keep those monthly emails going out), there is no reason that you shouldn’t be thinking and planning hard for the fall. You want to get out of the blocks fast. The reason is that your prospective clients are going to spend more marketing dollars in 2014 and 2015, and you want to get some of those bucks.
You would like some of that $180.12 billion, right?
In my case, in the past few weeks, I have slowed down the number of blog posts, guest posts and LinkedIn activity that I have been sending out. People still find me via SEO but I am not actively stimulating the conversation at my usual pace.
Why? I am finishing my book and its marketing plan. Here is what is close to the final cover. I am getting psyched. It will be a very valuable book (If, I do say so myself) packed with my insights from thirty years of pitching and over twenty interviews with pitch experts of all stripes.
Sign up below for my weekly newsletter and I will alert you to the launch of the 175 page paperback and eBook.
I guarantee that you will be able to deliver more successful new business pitches earlier and faster than the agency down the street.
Meetings that drag on and on with no apparent ending drive me nuts. Here is a timer that some at Google use to help manage meetings. The Time Timer helps to keep meeting creep to a minimum and drives awareness that there could be something better to be doing than spending all afternoon sitting in that conference room.