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At 4A’s Presenting About Ad Agency Websites

May 23, 2013 By Peter Leave a Comment

I am speaking at a CEO conference today at the 4A’s (American Association of Advertising Agencies.) My presentation is on the Good, Bad and Ugly of how agencies use their websites, social media and other digital tools for business development. Should be interesting as agency websites are a great window into how they think and position themselves.

To give you a couple of examples of what I am taking about:

Good: Maybe the best social agency (certainly in terms of self promotion) Likeable Media

Really bad: Insane ad agency website home pages

If you are an ad agency and would like to see the presentation give me a shout.

Ad Agency CEO’s: 1 Facebook Reason To Pay Attention To Mobile

May 2, 2013 By Peter Leave a Comment

I’ve written about how ad agencies, and digital agencies for that matter, need to move into mobile much faster.

A Wall Street Journal article on Facebook’s growth, “Facebook’s Hard Desk Job”, reported that Facebook is seeing phenomenal growth in mobile advertising (from $0 to $374 million in the 1st quarter — this kinda amazing factoid hammers last year’s fear that Facebook was missing the mobile parade.)

But, the point that really is the wake up call for agencies is that Facebook U.S. saw a decline from 153 million unique traditional computer visitors to 142 million during the same time period. Think about it… Facebook saw a DECLINE in uniques from the desktop.

What to do Ms. Agency CEO? If I were running an agency I’d be dialing up my mobile chops. Get this… we’ve moved from worrying about Internet advertising killing traditional to mobile killing everything in a blink.

Need more info… From Comscore:

4 Insane Advertising Agency Home Pages

April 30, 2013 By Peter Leave a Comment

I’ve been studying advertising, branding and digital agency websites using my Pinterest Advertising Agency Directory. I’ll be writing about my findings over the next few weeks.

Let’s Start With Insanity?

Here are 4 local and international agency home pages that are insane. Can you imagine an agency that is in the business of branding and digital marketing — and being creative — having a home page that announces: “Coming Soon?”

Allow me to state my somewhat obvious (but not apparently to some agencies) POV.

An existing agency should never, under any circumstances, have a Coming Soon home page. Visitors will come, see that you have nothing to say, have no creative approach to transitioning from one site to another and will split fast. Will they ever come back? Are they going to keep coming back to see if and when you’ve finally launced the new home page? My bet is not often and maybe never.

One more obvious point, this is not a good thing for your new business program.

The solution: be patient and wait until you make any changes until you’ve designed the new home page ready to go. Here is my little secret. I guarantee that no one is wondering when you are going to update your website. So, sit tight and live with what you have intill you are ready to relaunch. tell your CEO or ECD to chill.

Here are the 4 agencies. I’ll end with my “favorite” serial Coming Soon home page agency and, interestingly, its a big one:

Carrot Creative. This is a savvy digital agency. What’s up?

TBWA/LONDON, a rather large agency, OK a very big agency with clients like Nissan, Absolute and GSK, had the Coming Soon page on your left up for at least a couple of months.

Baron & Company. A Bellingham Washington agency with the tagline, “Technically Creative.”

Goodby Silverstein & Partners. Get this… the first Coming Soon page is from April 2013 and the second is from 2003. Yikes, these guys are repeat offenders.

Update: Goodby Silverstein & Partners And Coming Soon

April 19, 2013 By Peter 2 Comments

See the RED copy below for the update from Goodby. Funny!

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I am finishing “Good, Bad & Ugly”, a presentation on advertising agency websites for the 4A’s. I’ve got a couple of bads and will write about them soon. But, I need to share this BAD with you right now.

It’s hard for me to believe that a few advertising and digital agencies have Coming Soon home pages. Coming Soon…?! How can they fuckin do this? It is really insane and lame. What poor brand imaging. Does it mean that they couldn’t come up with a real creative solution or even some patience as they build their new website?

So, are there any famous agencies doing this? How about Goodby Silverstein & Partners?

Get this… their current site is Coming Soon and so was their 2003 version. I call them the king of Coming Sooners. Here are the home pages. First the 2003 version and then today’s (as of 4.19.13)

September 2013 Update… The new Goodby Silverstein website lives. I know this because they sent me an email with this message: “we came.”

Now all you have to do is check out this blog post… 13 Free Big Data Tools For Advertising Agency New Business.

Wasserman + Partners: Ad Agency of The Week (Gets Blogging)

April 4, 2013 By Peter 1 Comment

I am building a presentation for the 4A’s on good, bad and ugly advertising agency websites and social media programs from the perspective of business development. In my travels across the globe and my Pinterest advertising agency directory, I happend upon Vancouver’s Wasserman + Partners Advertising.

Wasserman + Partners is the largest full-service agency in British Columbia (that’s in the upper left hand corner of Canada.) Their message:

LET’S LAY IT ALL OUT ON THE TABLE HERE, SHALL WE. WE ARE WESTERN CANADA’S LOCALLY OWNED, LOCALLY OPERATED, SILO-FREE, EGO-FREE, CREATIVELY STRATEGIC, STRATEGICALLY CREATIVE, CAFFEINE GUZZLING, COFFEE-CUP RECYCLING, MILK DRINKING, HIGH ENERGY, LOW DRAMA, KARAOKE SINGING, MICROPHONE SWINGING, FULLY INTEGRATED, FULL-SERVICE, AND FULL-ON INDEPENDENT ADVERTISING AGENCY. ANYTHING WE MISSED THAT YOU’D LIKE TO KNOW?

What I like:

Wasserman’s website is simple, easy to navigate and gets out their brand message without complexity. Look at dozens of agency websites and ask yourself why so much clutter? These guys are into simplicity and isn’t that what much advertising is built on?

I think my favorite section is the blog. While it is built into the home page, an element that is often overdone, Wasserman has done an excellent job of incorporating the blog into the page that essentially has two sections: the work and what people are saying. Click on Saying and you go to one of the very rare blogs that delivers personality and a who’s who of the agency staff. In most blogland cases, and this goes for the entire world of blogging, the person or people creating the content are somewhat invisible. Not here. In Wasserman’s case, the blog has become a central part of the web experience and not an appendage. If I had a nock, I’d ask for more post frequency. But, at leaset I am not inundated.

Want more Agencies Of The Week? They are here.