Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

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My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi

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2020 In India

Namaste. I’ll get personal to start 2021.

Varanasi IndiaExactly 366 days ago I got on a 15-hour flight from Toronto to New Delhi. I was embarking on a 31-day trip that I had planned for at least 6 months after dreaming of India for years. I had initially thought that I was going to be traveling with my daughter and her husband. However, when our family was together at their home in Buenos Aires in October 2020 Mackenzie announced that she was pregnant. There went the family trip. I was now on my own.

I’d have to say that other than the birth of my granddaughter in June, that India was the highlight of 2020. I traveled from Delhi to a wedding in Jaipur to Udaipur’s lakes; Pushkar (where I did not think that sharing the often proffered marijuana milkshake was a good idea); mind-blowing holy Varanasi to the great crazy city of Mumbai and then back to Delhi. Because I had a plan to bring my ‘The People’ ethnographic photography series to India, I never felt like a pure tourist.

The highlights of my trip were the Jaipur wedding with my friends Nikhil Pandit and his wife (Nikhil has a highly recommended touring company); magnificent Udaipur (where on a lake boat I listened to the 4-year old girl behind me gently sing, Row Row Your Boat; Varanasi (I stayed wide-eyed in a hotel on the Ganges + the photo above is from one of the ghats) and cosmopolitan, and way complex Mumbai where my intro dinner with Satish Krishnamurthy of Sideways Consulting was like hanging out with an old friend.

Plus the highlight of highlights was my being invited to speak to college students at Mumbai’s ISDI School Of Communication and Delhi’s Sharda University.

Oh, oh, and eating everything on the streets. Everything. [Read more…] about My 2020 In India + Mahatma Gandhi

Borat Did A Video Just For For ME

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A Few Words From My Best Buddy Borat About My “Advertising Stories” Podcast

Borat for LevitanBorat helps me by asking… “What is make beautiful Advertising Stories podcast? People should listen.”

He also asked, “What you mean by telling your agency clients that they need to be unignorable? Yo want unignorable? You got me! A special gift for you, my American puppy.”  Or… “Агенттик кардарларыңызга алар жагымсыз болуш керек деп айткыңыз келгендиктен, сиз жагымсыз болуп калгыңыз келеби? Мени алдыңыз!”

So… I obviously had to go to Almaty, Kazakhstan last week to find Borat to have him make a video for me and Advertising Stories. This was not an easy get. First, I asked my friend Quentin Tarantino to find and then ask Borat’s daughter Tutar Sagdiyev to see if Borat would be in town. Tutar then asked Borat if he would do me the favor of making a video promotion for my advertising podcast for the wonderful, podcast loving, people of Kazakhstan. He was interested in doing almost anything for the great United States – if I promised to arrange a lunch with him and Rudy. Mayor Rudy said, sure what the hell. I’ll do anything these days.

I flew for 42 hours from Mexico City to Frankfurt to Istanbul to Almaty. Borat and I shot the video in my hotel room at the luxurious Ritz-Carlton Almaty. I had a tub in my room – I mean in the bedroom itself –  and he insisted that he bathe and eat blinis and caviar while I played Beatles songs before the shoot. A bit weird all around – but strangely refreshing. Subscribe to my newsletter and I will send you the picture of me and Borat in the tub.

You might ask “why did Borat do this for you?” My Kazak friend is thanking me for introducing him to Rudy Giuliani. And to prove to you, that even an advertising agency business development consultant can walk to unignorable talk.

 

Yikes. Donald Trump Loves Me. The Videos.

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I Admit It. I Am Not Sure That My Donald Trump ‘Loves Me’ Endorsements Are Good For Me. Ever. However.

Donald Trump EndorsementMonths ago The Donald made a couple of video endorsements for me. One about my business development consultancy… “Levitan’s The Best”. And, one about my Advertising Stories podcast. Here is the podcast list.

To put it mildly, The Donald is a bit divisive. However, he cannot be ignored, and therefore at the time, I thought what the heck, if he is going to do a couple of personal non-political videos, why not let him. I won’t get political either (plus I am an Independent). My goal was and is to be Unignorable. So, here is a bit of borrowed interest just for you.

Oh, Mahatma Gandhi also endorsed me as well. I had visited one of his homes in Mumbai last January. Does Mr. Gandhi help me find the center – for you? I mean, who was EVER liked by both Gandhi and Trump? You can see Gandhi’s pitch for me here on my Contact page.

Ta Da, Donald Trump For Levitan’s Expertise. #1.

 

Ta Da, Donald Trump For Levitan’s Podcasts. #2.

 

 

Thai TV Commercial Offers Some Feel Good During Covid-19

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Take Three Minutes To Feel Good

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

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What Does The Advertising Agency Of The Future Look Like? How About Your Agency?

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).

Bummed Out?

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?

Some Findings On The Future on Advertising

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