Peter Levitan & Co.

The New Business of Advertising

branding

Are There Too Many Advertising Agencies?

· · Leave a Comment

Lots. Like, Um, Too Many.

So… How many advertising agencies are there? OK, it is a bit impossible to count them all – and I am talking essentially every type of agency from Ogilvy down to your ex-Creative Director that does what he used to do for you but now he works (at a lower cost) out of his home.

So, how many? Here is a number I came across yesterday…

According to Clutch there are 17,532 “Top Advertising and Marketing Agencies” In the United States. 17,532.

Yikes. Want more? There are 193 in Dallas, 182 in Austin and 140 in Houston. That’s 515 in major Texas cities. Did I say Yikes? Now, imagine how many in London.

Here are some links to help y’all break out of the pack.

How Clients Find An Advertising Agency.

What Do Advertising Clients Want? I Asked A Real Mad Man.

A link to my enormous ad agency information blog. 

Five Immediate Things To Do To Break Out From The 17,532…

  1. Make sure you are everywhere a client might look to find your agency. Buy attention if you have to.
  2. Run a smart 24/7 business development program. Sorry, referrals are not enough.
  3. Have a competitive and distinctive brand positioning. Being an expert in something might help (actually, it will help a lot.)
  4. Try to look and act unignorable. Good news” your competitors are already ignored given the vast number of agency choices.
  5. Just hire me to help you grow awareness, leads, and closes. LOL. I am not kidding.

So, how many advertising agencies are in your market? Just to be outrageously obnoxious, a Google search on “Tulsa advertising agencies” turned up 2,820,000 results.

The Advertising Agency Of The Future

· · 2 Comments

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

Gary Vaynerchuk Loves You And Your Ad Agency

· · Leave a Comment

Contrary to (some) popular belief, Gary Vaynerchuk actually loves you and your advertising agency. He wants to help you grow. Here is my take on today’s Gary Vaynerchuk plus a rather inspiring B2B marketing video.

FYI: One of my best-read blog posts is “Gary Vaynerchuk Is Full Of Shit.” It is a response to his early damning of the advertising industry. Take a read. By the way, it has been read over 5,000 times. Why? Well, putting “Gary Vaynerchuk’ and “Full Of Shit” in your headline gets Google’s attention and speaks to my audience.

My original sense of Gary being full of shit stemmed from Gary’s 2015’s “Do you know the problem with Marketing?” episode of the Ad Age Digital Crash Course:

Here’s the ‘shit’ part. In the video, GaryVee pontificates in ‘Gary Speak’ about how advertising agencies don’t care about selling products (only about winning awards); that emotion does not sell (tell that to Apple’s “Think Different”); that ‘traditional’ advertising is inefficient (like much of digital isn’t); that creatives might want to consider shooting 10 spots for $300K each vs. one for $3 million (this is a new idea??? what world is he living in?) and that maybe we should think about testing advertising before we run it (hmm… that’s a new one).

I love self-promotion. And I get railing at the old ways of doing business to further one’s cause. But, please, cut the way too obvious crap and don’t be insulting.

Gary Vaynerchuk Is Not Full Of Shit – He Wants To Love You (And Your Ad Agency)

OK, that was Gary in 2015 when he was building Vaynermedia and needed some service differentiation. Let’s cut to 2019.  He recently spoke to a meeting of the Association of Independent Mortgage Experts. Watch the speech and Q&A below. Gary has both mellowed and has a lot of insight to deliver – to any B2B marketer. Just like your advertising agency.

A couple of Gary’s key points:

Buy underpriced attention for your agency marketing. This includes hammering underutilized LinkedIn. Hammer. Post like 40X a day.

Create longer content, like Gary’s videos, and cut them up for distribution. Amplify everything.

Don’t go out and hire a “social media expert” to run your program. YOU spend the 50 hours to learn it before you can ever judge the value of the freelancer/expert. I remember asking advertising agency CEO’s at Advertising Week if they ever placed a Google ad. The answer was no. I was like, are you kidding me? Do you even know WTF is going on?

Gary was asked how he finds the time to get things done. His answer – you probably waste three hours a day on really stupid shit. That 1-hour meeting should be 15 minutes.

If you run a local advertising agency, let’s say in Raleigh Durham, create a local show. Do a podcast, a local newsletter, a blog… just become known locally for your agency voice.

Big One: Romance your clients. Ever say thank you? Call up a client one year later to discuss that great project you did 12 months earlier? Send an unexpected gift? Call back a prospect that has fallen off your A-List? Find a good reason to say, Howdy.

The GaryVee Video…

 

A New Advertising Book?

· · Leave a Comment

Should I Write Another Advertising Book?

Should you write your advertising (agency) book?

I’ve written and produced four books since I sold my Portland advertising agency in 2012. I am now thinking of “writing” a new advertising book based on a tight edit of the best thinking I’ve delivered on this blog. I currently have well over 300,000 words here. The blog posts have been viewed over 340,000 times.

I’ll discuss why to bother turning the blog into an advertising book a bit later in this post.

Some History. Books I’ve Written.

These include:

Boomercide: From Woodstock to Suicide. This was my training wheels book on the, dare I say it, interesting subject of using suicide as a financial planning tool. When I sold my agency, my accountant said there are two things we can control: how much money you have and how much you spend. However, there is another major factor we cannot control: how long your money has to last. I went, um, why can’t I control the length of my life. Buy Boomercide here.

The Levitan Pitch. Buy This Book. Win More Pitches. I have read every book on pitching and presenting. This is without question the best book on this subject. Join thousands of other agency leaders and buy this book here. Or, pitch against the agencies that read my tome, and, dare I say it, possibly lose.

Potlandia and Jointlandia are two photo books I researched and shot about the early days of the burgeoning legal cannabis market. I shot these because I am an in investor in Portland’s cannabis industry and was fascinated by the early attempts (almost hippie-like attempts) at product and retail branding in what is now a billion-dollar marketplace. You can see these books right here. While you are at it, take a look at my other photographs. I am currently traveling around the world to photograph people on every continent.

Why Write A Business Book?

I think that there are four reasons to write a business book – an advertising book by me, a consultant, or your agency. [Read more…] about A New Advertising Book?

A New Advertising Award

· · 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.