Peter Levitan & Co.
The New Business of Advertising
I don’t have much to say to add to this commercial. Just watch it.
But I do want to point out that my very socially conscious friend Russ Stoddard, who runs Oliver Russell, one of the more serious purpose-driven marketing firms, pointed out that he thinks that charitable donations are up in the world of Covid-19. This message is inside of our Advertising Stories podcast. After you watch the Thai TV commercial, listen to the podcast. One of my best.
The advertising agency of the future needs some serious planning and agility. No surprise here. But, what is surprising to me is the lack of attention paid to how to craft an advertising agency for the future.
Just for the hell of it. I’ll start with the good old days.
My first job in advertising was at Dancer Fitzgerald & Sample. Back in the 1980’s DFS was New York’s largest advertising agency. We were sweetly based in the iconic Chrysler Building. At that time, we did not spend lots of gray matter on thinking about the future of the advertising agency business because we were making a 15% commission on media and 16.5% on production. We had a sweet client list that included General Mills, P&G, RJR Nabisco, Sara Lee, Northwest Airlines (I ran the account and our annual profits were $6 million on $9 million in revenues), HP and Toyota. As you might expect, we were not too concerned about reinvention. All this client and revenue firepower helped Saatchi & Saatchi love and buy Dancer in 1986.
Today advertising is a radically different business and ad agencies need to be thinking about how to be positioned for a future where multi-year AOR clients; 15% media commissions; three primary media types (TV, print, radio); a positive global network effect and loyalty are attributes of the past.
Not to get too down, but today the advertising world is about project work, crazy price consciousness, competition from all sides (large consultancies, in-house agencies and your ex-Creative Director who does just fine as a freelancer).
Look, for many agencies, it is kinda fucked up out there. As the famous Chinese curse says,
“May you live in interesting times”.
But, but, there are still agencies that grow and make bucks. You can too.
So, in preparation for this blog post – yes, it is ultimately about how to position your agency for the future – I read a bunch of articles on “the advertising agency of the future.” Not too surprising, this is a hot topic.
Interesting (as in ‘Uh Oh’) the first page of Google has articles on your future from traditional agency killers like Deloitte, Accenture, Adobe, CMO.com (an Adobe site).
The agency industry perspective is not on Google’s page one. It isn’t until page two that Inc., AdAge, The Drum and the ANA get to chime in.
I stopped trying to find an actual advertising agency perspective delivered via this search term by the time I got to page four. Do the big guys (even WPP, Publicis, Omnicom, etc.) not want to discuss the future?
Here are some of the highlights from my research. I’m listing these in random order. I’ll have my personal thoughts a bit later. [Read more…] about The Advertising Agency Of The Future
Speaking of resources… Here is a comprehensive guide that will help your agency become a winner in today’s market – The Advertising Agency Survival Guide.
This is a 2019 UPDATE of 2016’s initial “How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program” blog post. Advertising agency business development is now a 24/7 operation. Here is some advice on how to deliver.
By the way, this post currently has over 34,000 views. The post’s popularity is due to three key reasons:
1. It directly addresses a major advertising agency pain point: how to build a winning and efficient new business plan.
2. The post is well optimized for search engines and, therefore…
3. Google loves it. [FYI, my number two trafficked post is, “How To Name Your Advertising Agency – Part One” at 30,000 + views. While always rethinking their website, advertising agencies also obsess about their name. by the way, this post is also a very good cheat sheet on naming that you can steal if a client ever needs a new brand name.
“How To Build…” is all about the most important thing an advertising agency can do (while it is nurturing its current clients)… run a new business program that ensures that the agency will keep growing. Agencies are like sharks. They must keep moving forward to eat or else.
Your potential clients have over 4,000 marketing communications ‘agency’ options (other agencies, new consultancies, freelancers, even your ex-creative director…).
Therefore, any form of business development passivity on your part – sucks. If you think you are doing everything right, you probably are not. How can I say this? I never thought that all was well whilst running business development at Saatchi & Saatchi and when I owned my own agency.
Here’s my “ad”: I suggest that you give me a shout and take me up on my Corleone offer – It’s hard to refuse.
When I owned Citrus, my Portland and Bend Oregon advertising agency, I woke up every morning (and even some nights) thinking hard about my agency’s business development program. I lived as if Nike, our largest client, was about to walk out the back door along with its revenues. I bet as an ad agency owner or manager you have rough nights too. One of the things I knew I could and should do was to manage this back-door issue was to have an active, I stress active, new business plan in place.
Here are some (I stress some) of the elements of my new business plan. They helped me grow my agency Citrus (with new clients like Harrah’s, LegalZoom, Nike and the Montana Lottery). I hope my insights help you grow your agency.
When I set out to write this advertising agency new business post I didn’t think that it would be this long – a warning to the ADHD types. But, advertising agency new business planning is complex and is getting more complex every day due to the rapid changes in our industry and technology. That said, the devil in business development, you know what’s coming, is in the detail. Success is all about execution.
For example, running a successful inbound biz dev program that attracts market attention must be based on a sound strategy and smart agency process if you want to run a 24/7 sales program. Staying the course is critical.
[Read more…] about How to Build A Winning Advertising Agency New Business Program
I’m in L.A. doing some work with agencies and a local micro-photo-series for my global The People project. While waiting to get started shooting on Venice Beach, I hit up the Social Media Marketing podcast – one of my long-term get-smarter podcasts. I landed on a really good one. I highly recommend that you listen to “How to Create Video Ad Funnels That Work.”
I guarantee that the learning here could be applied to both your clients and your agency’s own sales program. Video rules – if done correctly. Here’s the podcast pitch from the host Michael Stelzner:
Thinking about creating more video ads? Wondering how to produce more effective social media video ads?
To explore how to create video ad funnels that work, I interview video ads expert Travis Chambers. His company, Chamber Media, specializes in creating scalable social video ads for clients such as Turkish Airlines, NordicTrack, and Yahoo.
I urge you to check it out. Especially if you want to learn from an ‘advertising agency’ that has separated itself from the mega-pack of zillions other advertising agencies.
But wait, there’s more…
The more is that I want to quickly highlight Chamber Media’s website.
They do a few things very right.
Way too many advertising agency websites do not sell. If you need some sales inspiration, head over to Chamber Media.
A personal note: I am just getting started on my The People photo project. My goal is to shoot more portraits of more people on more continents than any other photographer. I will discuss this in detail in a future post. So far, I have over 300 portraits all shot with the same look = outside against a portable white background. I’ve now shot in China, Mexico, Selma, and L.A. Here are two from this week’s Venice Beach series. I think I’ll head back to Mexico with over 60 new portraits.
When I owned my Portland advertising agency I was always looking for a way to really grab the attention of a business development prospect the second they hit our home page.
I mean grab them. Excite them. Hold them. Sell them.
An approach that I considered over and over was to have a stand-up comedian do one or more video sets about advertising issues, the issues that our agency would solve plus toss in some self-deprecating agency humor. The key here was to immediately capture home page attention, look different and find a way to deliver our sales pitch via laughs. For some reason, I never made the decision to go this route and I kinda regret at least testing it.
A new liquor company looking for marketing help approached me last week. As I was starting to think through their objectives, product line and target market opportunities, I began a search for what is currently considered smart liquor advertising. One of my advertising agency clients pointed me to the Deadpool actor Ryan Reynold’s Aviation Gin. I’ll get back to him in a minute. [Read more…] about See How Advertising Agency Humor Can Sell You