Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

social media

61 Best Social Media Tools From Buffer

· · Leave a Comment

I use Buffer to schedule and send out some of my Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ thoughts and things like this very sweet list from Buffer.

Here is an example of Buzz Sumo, just one cool tool.

61 Best Social Media Tools for Small Business

Here is a link to the full list.

These 61 should provide hours of fun. I am a tool freak and I am looking forward to using a few of them to help market this blog and get the word out on the new book.

Oh, and you Ms. Agency person… use these to dazzle your clients and new business prospects. There are lots of insights to be had here. Just look left to get started.

Content And More Content… Getting Tired Yet?

· · Leave a Comment

I am getting tired of the outrageous amount of social content that we are all producing every day. OK, I am not tired of MY content!

But, I do like content in the form of cartoons and think that they are one of the most underutilized forms of communication. That’s why I am using TheCartoonAgency to build me some cool cartoons for my book. Why don’t you use cartoons to get your messages out and into the deepest recesses of minds?

In the meantime, here is one of their latest cartoons. Its kinda a what if… Like, what if we stopped making more content.

networking_tca

How Advertising Agencies Publish On LinkedIn

· · Leave a Comment

I’ve begun to test LinkedIn’s new content publishing platform. It allows all of us (the platform is currently rolling out) to publish long posts on LinkedIn — just like Mark Cuban. Importantly, your posts will be seen outside your own network. This is the big benefit. Here is LinkedIn’s announcement.

“Starting today, LinkedIn is opening up our publishing platform to our members, giving them a powerful new way to build their professional brand. When a member publishes a post on LinkedIn, their original content becomes part of their professional profile, is shared with their trusted network and has the ability to reach the largest group of professionals ever assembled. Now members have the ability to follow other members that are not in their network and build their own group of followers. Members can continue to share their expertise by posting photos, images, videos and their original presentations on SlideShare”

I posted two very short posts last week to see how the system works. The posts were simply repurposed content from this blog — easy! I can’t say that I am overwhelmed at the numbers but I like that I could track my stats immediately and that I amassed, well here are the stats as of yesterday (they are up another 12 as of this morning):

abc

My goal is to continue to test the publishing platform and to see how longer posts about broader subjects perform. I am sure that the art of headline writing will make a big difference.

Take away: even small agencies can now broadcast their brilliance to the entire Linkedin network.

1 Reason To Pitch French Advertising Clients

· · Leave a Comment

One of the better weekly newsletters I get is from the long-time-insight-rich-website Six Pixels of Separation. As the website says:

TWIST IMAGE PRESIDENT, MITCH JOEL, BRINGS YOU DIGITAL MARKETING AND MEDIA HACKING INSIGHTS AND PROVOCATIONS FROM HIS ALWAYS ON/ALWAYS CONNECTED WORLD.

Twist Image is a digital agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto that kicks most digital agency’s marketing butt and, as you can see, has a blog that adds value and drives agency awareness. Interesting fact… the agency website does a location lookup to personalize the home page. In my case, it knows that I am in Mexico right now. Nice touch.

Twist Image

OK, Back To Pitching French Clients

The blog has a guest feature called: Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention. This week it points to the news that the French government has dictated that management can’t email employees after work hours. In France that means after 6PM. Here is the post along with a link to the CNET News article.

French say ‘non’ to work email after 6 p.m. – cNet. “Ahh, who doesn’t want to spend their entire childhood and teenage years studying in an old school education institution that is making young people miserable, feeling inadequate and, ultimately, forcing them into a regiment of memorization of things they should never need to remember? I see this often when you look at more traditional European countries and their non-progressive school curriculums The good news? You get to graduate and become a ‘fonctionnaires,’ (if you live in France). A place that makes insane rules like this. I have a better idea: why stop at email? Just shut down the electricity for all fonctionnaires so nobody has to do anything? Alternately, you could just say, ‘hey, what if we let these adults make their own rules and attempt to find their own balance? Wow, what decade are we living in? How stupid do we think that people are?” (Mitch for Hugh).

My take…

  1. France is fucked up. I am not a small government guy but please… can’t people run their own lives? Are the French babies that need coddling?
  2. Recent press has discussed France’s issue of losing talented digital / programming / entrepreneur / creative class types to countries where they can do their thing in a pro-business environment.
  3. It must be a sign of the times when management (this means some of you) has to be told to let people live their lives. I never emailed my staff after 6PM. I am a really good, understanding, caring pro family guy. I didn’t need laws to be act like a decent person.  🙂

If French agencies are going to work at say 80% of capacity then go and get business from the French clients that need 100% agencies. Hello Peugeot. That said, you will need to have a French language website like Twist Image (it helps that they are in Quebec where the government dictates that they need a bilingual website.) Hmm… is there something about French speakers?

Bon chance!

Sign up for this blog’s weekly newsletter. It will make sure you know when my book on pitching comes out (soon.)

12 Ad Agency Presentation Mistakes – Why?

· · Leave a Comment

I interviewed Tony Mikes, Founder/Managing Director of the 800 strong agency network Second Wind today (my agency used to be a happy member.) The interview will be one of ten expert interviews that will be included in my book on ad agency pitching. You can see the title I slaved over at the very bottom of this email.

The interview confirmed the sad truth that many agencies are making serious presentation mistakes when they pitch for new business. I already knew this because I’ve talked with many agency owners, agency search consultants, presentation experts and… clients that have sat through mistake ridden presentations. Tony reconfirmed it.

I can’t wait to publish Tony’s insightful comments. They come from firsthand experience when he recently sat on the client side of the table during the RFP and finalist process. The pitch was for the National Aquarium account and the interview with Tony is (pick your word): revealing, sad, unnerving and any other word that you can come up with that describes the lunacy of avoidable agency failure.

Tony hit on the almost all of my twelve ad agency presentation mistakes. Each of these will be discussed at length in the book.

  1. Immediately bore the audience
  2. Don’t have a distinctive message
  3. Don’t have a logical flow
  4. Load up the room with agency people
  5. Bring poor presenters
  6. Don’t deliver any WOW’s
  7. Bring tons of ideas – make many of them irrelevant
  8. Spend too much time talking about YOU not THEM
  9. Don’t rehearse
  10. Misuse PowerPoint
  11. Don’t stage manage
  12. Run out of time

Yikes. As I said, sad but true. By the way, if you search my site for other articles on pitching you will find ones like this: Half of Advertising Agency Staff Hates Pitching. This research was the genesis of my book’s reason for being.

Oh, the title…. The Levitan Pitch: Buy This Book. Win More Pitches.

Now, please sign up for my email newsletter below to make sure that your competitor down the street doesn’t read my book before you read it. I want you to win more pitches, not the other agency.