Pitching

The Advertising Agency New Business Pitch

August 22, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

How To Run An Advertising Agency New Business Pitch

A high school teacher friend asked me to help her with a study plan about how an advertising agency manages the advertising agency new business pitch process. She is asking her students to run their own sales pitch for an imaginary client. I thought, what the heck, I’ll share some of my thinking with you.

Why me? Well, I did write the definitive book on ad agency new business pitching which included a detailed look at the advertising agency pitch process. What to do and what not to do and how doing the what not to do will cost your agency money, time, staff pain, and heartbreak. Somehow this teacher found my book. I guess Google works.

A Very Simplified Look At The Advertising Agency Pitch Process

Before I start, I have to say that the current way many clients select an agency, as in having multiple agencies pitch against each other, is too time-consuming and costly for both the client and the agencies. I’ve seen large pitches drag on for weeks and months. One would think that a savvy client should be able to look hard at the agency’s expertise, past work, case histories, culture plus a couple of conversations to make a decision. Of course, pricing is also a factor, especially if the pitch is partially run by the client’s procurement department. A department focussed on costs – not necessarily an assessment of agency skill-sets.

OK, nuff said about the inefficiency of many pitches.

There is no such thing as a ‘standard’ pitch. Some clients are large and others small. Some large theoretically sophisticated clients have no process, and some small clients are super organized. Here is a look at what is often the process.

Some clients are looking for the whole enchilada (an agency that will do everything from branding to social media) and some clients are just looking for one specific need – often a project. For example, a new name, and logo. Some clients want to work with category experts (as in needing a healthcare specialist) and some are looking for a great ‘creative’ agency.

How Does The Client Find Agencies?

Here is my master list on getting found and contacted:

You get a referral from a happy current or past client. Hopefully, your agency has a referral strategy to help make this happen.

You get a referral from a friend or family member. For example, my nephew was once the publisher of Men’s Vogue – he introduced me to someone who became a great client. Maybe your mother plays bridge with the mother of New Balance’s marketing director.

Word of mouth (WOM). People have heard of you inside the general marketing universe. Somehow, you’ve gotten people talking.

Your agency has won a prestigious marketing award. The right third-party recognition is a good thing. No, do not enter every ward show.

The press writes about you, your agency or asks for your expert opinion. I have a friend at Adweek who occasionally asks for a quote. This has been a good thing for my brand awareness.

You know how to use social media to get the good word out and make connections. That means you use one or just a couple of blogging, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, TikTok; Facebook, you podcast: or utilize whatever the latest social media platform that makes sense for your audience.

You advertise your services. Yes, imagine an agency that actually uses advertising.

You wrote a well-targeted advertising or marketing book that gains industry fame – like my: The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

You are an expert and the specific categories that you rule (tactical or business categories) know about you.

You speak at the right conference, were in that smart podcast or write for trade publications. I used to write for HubSpot and ‘borrowed’ their enormous audience.

You know how to do what is often called Account Based Marketing. This means that you have created a list of the type of clients that your agency ‘should have’ and you contact them directly. Intelligently and gently. Often you will send them hard to resist, I call it unignorable, insights.

A professional advertising agency search consultant put you on the prospective client’s list. This is a very good thing. It should not be an accident that the consultant knows about you.

Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK

August 8, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

Try Not To Weep When You Read ADWEAK.

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

I 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

July 6, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

Ah, Nothing Like Sales Pitch Rejection

Here 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

Is Advertising Agency Pitch Pain Deadly?

April 22, 2021 By Peter 1 Comment

I think that agency management has to ask the question – Is advertising agency pitch pain killing your agency?

I kicked off “The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.“, my book on how to win a pitch (still selling well if you are wondering if books have a long life), with a discussion of the hardships that come from running after every new RFI, RFP, and pitch. We are now in a marketing world where the number of client-driven, post-pandemic (well the worst of the pandemic) pitches are on the rise. However, make sure you know which client-based pitch you should go for.

At best, you have a 30% chance of winning. If you are the incumbent, you might even want to bow out fast. The win rate for incumbents is not, um, great.

Pitching Is Good. Pitch Pain Is Bad.

The good news.

The number of clients seeking new agencies is up. I hear this form agency owners, from pubs like Campaign Magazine and pitch consultants including Avi Dan as he wrote in his Forbes article, “Marketers Plan To Shed Even Good Agencies In The Coming Months.” Here’s a tidbit…

Almost all advertisers that I spoke with are considering an agency change. Surprisingly, only a few are motivated by bad advertising. For most, the issue has more to do with the future than the past. As one CMO put it, “Our agency is doing an OK job, but times are changing and I’m not sure they are ready for what’s next. We need a different type of agency, with different skills than the one we have.”

Why are clients looking for new agencies?:

Clients orgs and CMOs are worried. Worried about their marketing programs in light of the pace of digital transformation. And, they are worried about their jobs. Agency change represents some form of quick solution and a sense of progress.
Clients are looking for more and more digital expertise.
Many incumbent agencies are somewhat somnambulant. Their client contact people have not been trained on how to hold and grow clients. A serious training issue that I will help address this year.
Many clients simply have no clue what they need and want. Let’s politely call it being fickle.

These factors, and more, lead to agency shifts. This can be good for the agencies that “get it.”

The bad news.

The bad news is that agencies will need to figure out what business they should pitch. I’ll get right to the point…. do not pitch everything. Why? Do not pitch every new account prospect that comes your way – it will be a waste of your time, money, and – importantly – agency mental health. Have a plan for what the right clients look like and have a budget (oh, and a process).

I offer this agency CEO mantra:

We will not pitch every account that comes our way. The pitch process is simply too costly. Before we pitch any account we will work hard to determine if the prospective client is a good fit for the agency based on a set of predetermined criteria. Here is a start. Is the client famous? Do they respect marketing? Do they actually know what they want? Do they want us to do brilliant work? Will they pay well? Are they a cultural fit?

Hopefully, you can say yes to two or three of these.

The $$$$ problem.

Writing RFIs, RFPs rather time-consuming and expensive. Understatement. Here is a bit from my pitch book’s chapter: More Painful Math. Clearly, your numbers may vary. But, you’ll get the point that not having a business development plan with objectives and strategies is a loss-leading problem.

From The Levitan Pitch. book…

Agency CEO’s and Business Development Directors occasionally use metaphors to help describe their business development efforts. One of the all-time favorites is how similar agencies are to cobblers and shoes. Cobblers do not have the time to make shoes for their children, and too many agencies don’t make the time to run smart business development programs.

Here’s another metaphor.

Agencies (OK, American agencies) often point to the career batting averages of major league baseball players when they discuss the success rate of their new business programs. As they put it, even baseball Hall of Famers are perceived as victorious if they have a career batting average of .300 or more. That’s only 3 hits for every 10 times at bat. Even the great Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson only had a .261 batting average. In agency think, this would mean that the agency would be Hall of Fame material if they won 3 out of every 10 pitches.

Let’s do some agency math using the 1:3 ratio.

Based on my personal experience, conversations with agency CEO’s, and a review of existing data, on average, small to medium agency responds to 10 RFP’s and participates in 6 pitches per year. Your mileage may vary but let’s go with this.

My estimated cost per RFP is $15,000 based on 150 hours of work at a direct labor cost of $100 per hour. At ten RFP’s per year, that’s a participation cost of $150,000 per year.

A conservative estimate of an average finalist pitch, which includes external and internal meetings, pitch management, strategic planning, writing, creative work, pitch design (as in leave-behinds and supporting digital programs), the pitch itself, T&E, and post presentation follow-up costs an agency approximately $35,000. If an agency does 6 pitches per year that’s $210,000.

Obviously, given the size range between multinational networks and small shops, an agency’s mileage may vary but these numbers seem fair for the average agency, and they help frame the issue.

Using my scenario, the total annual cost for RFP’s and pitching comes to $360,000. This number does not include the day-to-day costs of business development. If you add in management, creative, analog and digital market- ing, and business development director time, an agency could easily top out at over $500,000 in labor and outsourced business development costs per year. I am ball-parking here just to get to a reference number.

It can get much more costly. The search consultant David Wethey of Agency Assessments International reports that the average pitch cost per UK agency was £178,000 in 2010. Channeling Las Vegas, as an agency owner I’ve put my own hard-earned cash on the line to win new business. As I write this book, Microsoft just handed their international account to Interpublic. Just imagine how much it took to win that pitch.

Bottom line… an agency could easily spend $500,000 to have a “Hall of Fame” business development batting average of .300. Given today’s decreasing creative services industry profit margins, these numbers could be considered depressing.

Do you like this math? I don’t.

The People Pain Problem.

Pitch Pain is real… Pitching, too often, results in significant agency employee pain. I started my book by quoting a research study of advertising professionals by Provoke Insights that supports the idea that agency employees are dissatisfied with their agency’s pitch process.

“Approximately half (47% of respondents) of advertising professionals surveyed by Provoke Insights say they are dissatisfied with the current internal approach to pitching.”

And, again from Avi.

During the last year I had been traveling all over the country, meeting with advertisers and CEOs, except, for the fact that I’m not actually traveling physically. I’m still stuck at home, in New York, relying – like many of us – on virtual meetings.

As much as pitches represent a chance for agencies to win some much-needed revenue, they’re also an additional cost. Already short-staffed, in light of cost cuts during the pandemic, agency bosses will need to weigh their chances of winning new business, along with the impact it will have, on work for current clients. It can be a slippery slope for those CEOs struggling to balance short-term gains and the longer-term stability of their business.

One more point. Responding to RFIs and RFPs and pitching takes time away from current clients. need I say more?

The Advertising Agency Pitch Pain Bottom Line?

Look, winning new business is good. However, winning the right new business is very very good.

Running after every “available” account is bad. You will lose more than you win. Have a plan and decision-making criteria for what account you should pitch for.

Back to the main question: “Is RFI, RFP, And Pitch Pain killing your advertising agency?” The answer can be a disastrous – yes.

Give me a shout if you want to have a talk about my perspective.

Even More – Winning The Zoom Pitch

I built a video presentation on how to run a winning virtual advertising agency pitch on Zoom. It is guaranteed to help reduce advertising agency pitch pain. Check it out.

The Biggest Advertising Agency New Business Secret

February 28, 2021 By Peter Leave a Comment

The Biggest, Most Important Advertising Agency New Business Secret.

It’s Sales Stupid.

Back in 1992, James Carville, Bill Clinton’s strategist said, “It’s the economy, stupid” to make sure the Clinton campaign remembered what was critically important to the American electorate. So, taking my cue from James, I offer that “It’s sales stupid” is the biggest, most important advertising agency new business secret.

An advertising, design, PR agency new business program, marketing materials, presentations (even daily conversations with existing clients), and new business pitches are all about sales. Sounds obvious, right? The problem is that ‘sales’ can be a dirty word at some ‘creative’ agencies. If you think that I am overstating this, take a look at a few agency websites, and ask yourself if they are designed to be high-octane sales experiences that drive leads or just well-designed agency brochures. I think that the Contact page is a number one offender. Contact copy like, “Give us a call” is simply not a romantic way to begin a relationship.

An Advertising Agency New Business Secret

A discussion of how to use the science of salesmanship in an agency presentation could fill a book. I’ll be brief and hit what I think are the most effective techniques we can learn from the masters of salesmanship. Allow me a brief detour first.

I left advertising in 1995 to put a group of New Jersey newspapers online for Advance Internet (the digital newspaper arm of the Newhouse Media Group – you know them as the owner of Condé Nast). In addition to inventing New Jersey Online’s digital newspaper editorial persona, we also had to build an early online sales program that included the design of new advertising units and a sales pitch for this new Internet platform. To help me, Advance brought in Jim Hagaman from the Miami Herald. Jim was easily one of the savviest media salespeople I had ever met.

Within a few days, I had gone from thinking that I knew how to sell (i.e. running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi), to jettisoning much that I had learned, to watching a master actually make sales in the nascent Internet marketplace. Much of what you see below came from Jim.

One of his more interesting sales insights came when I said that we needed to go pitch New Jersey Online to New York advertising agencies. He said, whoa boy. In his experience, agencies always mucked up the sale. They wanted to put their own stamp on the sales message, usually got the details wrong, and always slowed down the process. He said that we were going directly to the clients to explain the benefits of digital media. As I eventually witnessed, he was right.

Actually, here is one more super insightful story that will introduce my next point, which I admit might be a “duh” for some of you.

You have to understand your client’s mindset, needs, pain points, rationale, and emotional motivations before you can ever craft an effective sales pitch.

I learned this lesson at my first agency pitch for New Jersey Online. I figured I’d start with my very own ex, the New York office of Saatchi & Saatchi. I knew the agency inside and out and had worked with their Executive Media Director Allen Banks for years. My pitch included a 1996 hockey puck graph of projected Internet usage and a discussion of digital advertising that touted our newfound ability to track how website visitors viewed and interacted with online advertising. Was Allen smiling? No. His reaction?

“Are you f*cking kidding me? We have made a fortune not really knowing how, when and for how long consumers have been looking at our ads. I manage hundreds of millions in advertising media placement. Knowing how much of it doesn’t work will kill our golden goose.”

My point in telling you this story is that I didn’t think through Allen’s motivations before I delivered my early online advertising sales pitch. By the way, he was right. The Internet sure seems like it killed some parts of the golden advertising goose.