Insights

A New Advertising Award

August 26, 2019 By Peter 1 Comment

Actually, A New Advertising Award And A Pat On My Back

I’m about to digress before I get to the new (to me) advertising award.

I’ve had zillions of conversations with advertising agencies about why their agency blogs get little to no traffic. I have lots of reasons. However, a key one is that essentially, in many cases, nobody wants to read their shit – see what I mean here.

But… There is simply no good reason that agencies should write stuff that either nobody wants to read or is simply a kind of a rehash of what other agencies have already written. Therefore, my award, listed below, is for demonstrating that if you write about things that your target market/audience wants to read, they will actually read your shit.

End of digression.

Award Number One: Ad Stars

I’ve added a new award to my award list. Go check out Ad Stars on my master award list at Top Advertising and Design Awards.

Thanks to my friend Bobby McGill and his must-read branding in asia magazine for alerting me to Ad Stars. As the article says, “Ad Stars wraps up its 12th year with winners chosen from 20,645 entries submitted from 60 countries.”

Here’s the winner’s list.

Go win this award next year. Put it on you ad award list. You have one, right?

Award Number Two: Me

I am giving this award to myself for writing about a subject that appears to be rather dear to the hearts of advertising agencies. The subject is the desire to win an advertising award. I know this because my 2019 blog post, Top Advertising and Design Awards has + 7,400 views as of today.

My point? I deliver valuable information to my prospective clients. I know that you can “own” a subject that matters to your readership. The readership (as in new clients) you really want.

Advertising Agency Process and Profitability

August 21, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

The Right Process = Advertising Agency Profitability

Warning: While not as sexy as a new Instagram video plan, this in-depth 3,500-word post is all about advertising agency profitability.

OK, OK, as an ex-agency CEO, I will admit that profitability is rather sexy. Sexier, that is, than Instagram.

By the way, if this post is too long for your online perusal, I’ll send you a PDF version. Just email me at peter@peterlevitan.com

$$$$

A bit of background. When I worked at Saatchi & Saatchi one of the accounts I ran was Northwest Airlines. At that time, a time when airlines spent big bucks, their media budget was $60 million per year. At the standard 15% commission, we generated $9 million in agency revenues. $9 million! Ah, the good old days. Days when an agency minted bucks even if some of our processes were a bit wanky. That isn’t the case anymore.

Today, process: the art and science of managing client relations, agency staff, expenditures and time, is critical to your growing profitability.

A Wonderful Process Plan

I have a Texas advertising agency client that isn’t anywhere near as profitable as they should be. Their problem isn’t having the right clients or clients that want great work, or clients that spend money. Their problem is not having the right workflow process to ensure that these clients are profitable.

And, worse, because the agency appears to be always overworked, they don’t have the time or energy to run a smart and consistent new business program. A 24/7 program.

I built this client process plan for them and thought, why not share it? To protect the innocent, this full-service ad agency has been renamed… Wonderful Advertising. I think that these general principles and actions can be applied to any communications agency type.

The Wonderful Agency: Background

Wonderful is an integrated marketing communications agency based in Dallas. Wonderful describes itself as (from Wonderful’s Twitter profile):

“A full-service advertising and marketing agency blending traditional and non-traditional media with digital services, graphic design, and social media.”

A bit boring, but at least they’ve made a statement.

Wonderful: Management Issues

Wonderful is entering a next-stage business phase where it would like to add larger national clients to its roster. In order to do so, it would like to set up client management systems to improve its workflow efficiency and to improve and manage its client relationships and most importantly… increase agency profitability. The agency must also build a business development system that will help them entice and land the type of clients that they need for agency growth. [Read more…] about Advertising Agency Process and Profitability

Advertising Agency Recession Freakout

August 15, 2019 By Peter Leave a Comment

Advertising Agency Prosperity During A Recession – Fuhgedaboudit

Is your advertising agency ready for the next recession? Have you been thinking that the current sweet economy that has helped the small and medium-sized advertising agency market to prosper in the past couple of years was going to last forever?

Well, the time has come to fuhgedaboudit.

Early last week a smart agency client of mine asked me about the current volatility of the stock market that is driven by increasingly inept and ill-timed trade war announcements. He mentioned that his clients are getting skittish because they do not have a clear view of the future. Uncertantude is not a harbinger of growth in client marketing, advertising spending and therefore agency security.

Yesterday the stock market dropped 3% on thinking that a global recession is coming. Does this make you feel secure? Even if the market continues its up and down ride, clients will be spooked for awhile.

The Advertising Agency and Recessions

Recessions breed fear and loathing within client ranks. I know this having gone through some major recessions where worried clients lower budgets, stop programs and begin to fire and change agencies. You do not need to hear my personal history. But you should remember the ‘great recession’ of December 2007 through June 2009. The USA GDP dropped by 5.1%.

To be direct, that recession fucked the advertising industry and I am not sure that the industry, as in what it can charge clients, has ever recovered. I won’t go into detail about the recession. But, if you need a memory nudge, watch these two movies again: The Big Short and The Queen Of Versaille.

What Can You Do? Think Business Development Baby.

You know what happens to client spending and loyalty during an advertising recession. What can you do about it other the tried and mostly failed attempts of trying to convince clients that recessions are exactly the time to increase advertising branding and spending.

Well, you should now up your agency to prospect B2B marketing and spending. Get that account-based marketing program off the shelf. That means it is time to market your agency because:

One or more of your best clients will exit through the back door.
You’ve been too complacent. When business is good, advertising agencies think the good time will roll on. Not.
Sorry, referrals will not sustain any agency growth during a recession.
Good news, your competitive advertising, digital and PR agencies have been somnolent as well. They’ve given you a big marketing gap to fill.
“Consultants” like Accenture are smarter than agencies when it comes to managing recessions. They will eat up some business.

The recession is coming. Tomorrow? Next year? Who knows. But, I do know it is coming.

It is time to up your advertising agency marketing game. By the way, this is not my first rodeo. Here is an older blog post on recessions.

My recession marketing reading list. Go forth.

My Recession Reading List…

Do You Remember Creative Ideas?

August 13, 2019 By Peter 1 Comment

Ah, Creative Ideas…

I grew up in advertising’s heyday. We were very much about ideas. Words. Images. Big ideas.

I am not going to babble on like so many babyboomers. I’ll just show you a fucking great idea. A brilliant use of words. Images. Timing. Emotion.

So, the next time you obsess about your Google ad, ask yourself, if there is an idea there. Algorithms are not ideas. Algorithms are not human.

Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

August 13, 2019 By Peter 6 Comments

Is It Time To Kill Your Advertising Agency Blog?

I’ve updated my 2017 blog post about the power of the advertising agency blog and the question of should y’all continue to go for it or kill it.

I think that this is a big question that should be reviewed every year. Another question. Would anyone miss your blog?

To help answer these, I am going to discuss the pros and cons of advertising agency blogging. The kind of content creation that has been considered an integral element in an agency’s business development program. Blogging has been a key element of an agency’s Attraction Strategy.

Me

I have been consistently blogging since the early 2000’s. I started blogging as the CEO of my Oregon agency Citrus (I covered both advertising issues and the late 2000 recession’s effect on marketing).

The advertising agency business development blog you are currently reading has over 650 blog posts and acts as the core of my inbound marketing program. Good news for me, it fills my new client pipeline. Blogging has been very good to me.

But, but… my opinion about blogging, well at least for low volume advertising agency blogs, is that they are losing their power to attract a targeted audience, as in client leads. I see a few reasons for this.

There are zillions of blogs and blog posts every day. There has been a dramatic increase in the last five years.
There are hundreds (thousands?) of advertising agency blog posts and insights posted every week.
Most agencies write about the same subjects over and over.
Many agencies do not use online SEO tools to determine what blog post subjects will attract the most readership. I great way to do this is to look at what works for your most successful competitors.
Most agency blogs are boring.
Many client prospects are moving to podcasts and videos for their marketing information.

OK, Back To You. Should You Maintain Your Advertising Agency Blog? Or, Get Real And Just Kill It.

I look at a lot of advertising agency websites and their blogs. Many of the blogs are informative and brand building. However, way too many are just me-too blogs that actually deliver very little benefit to the agency.

The benefits should, stress should include the generation of incoming new client interest, showing that the agency Thinks Different (in a world of thousands of agency and advertising services options), help sell the agency as being on top of the advertising market, reinforces current client perceptions, demonstrates that the agency get content marketing, and demonstrates some personality and chutzpah. I call the chutzpah part… being Unignorable.

Start Here: Some Huge Blog Stats

The world really does not need another blog. As Steven Pressfield says in the title of his must-read book: “Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t: Why That Is And What You Can Do About It”.

To help put blogging in perspective, here are some numbers.

How many blogs are there? From Hosting Tribunal: To date, there are over 1.6 billion websites in the world and more than 500 milion are recognized as blogs. Their authors account for over 2 million blog posts daily.

WordPress states that “Over 409 million people view more than 21.5 billion pages each month” and “Users produce about 84.9 million new posts and 45.2 million new comments each month.” And, that’s just on the WordPress platform.

Google delivered 1768,000 results when I searched on “advertising agency blog.”