I’ve sat through hundreds of these presentations and have brought many of my friends’ companies in to speak to my colleagues. So here, from my experience, are the best ways to present your company to a room full of advertising people (in no particular order).

1. BRING FOOD (I know I said these were in no particular order, but this is the most important). Seriously. If you want harried, overworked ad people to come and listen to your pitch, the least you can do is feed us (or give us beer. Or both). Bonus points go to vendors who bring in interesting or unusual food. We eat a lot of pizza and sandwiches. My friend at OnSwipe once brought us Chinese food. That was a good day. 
2. Bring examples. As much as we want to learn the ins and outs of how your platform, technology, app, service, etc is new and exciting and different, what we NEED to hear is how it’s being used. Not how you think people should use it – how are people actually using it. Tell us about other agencies that you have partnered with, what client bought in, and what they did with it.
3. Show results. Like above, tell us what really happened! Too often vendors either present case studies that are so new and fresh they don’t have results, or they can’t/won’t share the results, or they don’t even have them because they are compartmentalized away from the broader marketing.
4. Do your homework. Find out who our clients are ahead of time. If you know we work with Pizza Hut or Ford, come prepared with some ideas about how you would use your platform for those brands. If those teams are in the room they will appreciate the ideas.
5. Get a sponsor. It’s always a better presentation when someone inside the company is helping to bring you in. They can round up their friends, tell people about the presentation, etc to help get a better attendance. They can also remind people about it later when they want to use your product/service.
6. Be patient. It’s rare that a vendor comes in, shows off their stuff, and we have an immediate need for it. More likely, if you make a good impression we will remember your offering when we are concepting and then give you a frantic call about how we need your help right away.

What else? Anyone want to chime in with some other ways vendors can make good impressions on agencies (and don’t say give us free stuff like Xboxes or ski trips – that only happens at media agencies).

This is what greeted me today as I left Back Bay Station on my way to work. A guy was handing out these envelopes to anyone who passed by announcing “Two free dollars and a chance to win a vacation.” I’m usually in the camp of people who would prefer to pepper spray anyone who attempts to talk to me, or hand me anything, on the street, but I figured, two bucks is two bucks.

And as you can see, it was a real two dollar bill. and a real chance to win a vacation (I didn’t win).

But ask me about the last banner ad I saw? NOTHING. The last banner ad (or “OLA” as us in the advertising world like to call them) that I can remember was a home page takeover of the NY Times, where the “I’m a Mac” and “I’m a PC” guy pulled a lever in a unit on the right-hand side, and it changed the headlines on the leader board banner at the top. And that was probably 2008.

Not only did I tweet and Facebook about this promotion, now I’m blogging about it. Well done TNT Vacations.

In order to find out if you won the vacation you need to enter your email address. How many address will they collect today? The guy handing out the envelopes had a big stack. And he had probably been there for a while already. Multiple that across a few cities and you have a nice email recruitment effort. A nice, CHEAP, recruitment effort. Even if only 1 in 10 people check to see if they have one, it’s still only a cost-per-acquisition of $20.

Compare that with average click through rates of .05% for display ads and it seems to me that you need to run A LOT of banners to get that same person to take action. Granted, there is no opportunity for storytelling here, no brand-building creative, they didn’t change my perception of TNT Vacations (although they did make me aware of it, so that’s pretty good).

I often wonder, when my clients tell me that want to spend millions of dollars on banner ads, whether or not it would be more effective to simply pass out money on a street corner.

If anyone from TNT Vacations (or their parent company Funjet Vacations) is reading this and want to get in touch and share some data, I’d love to see it.

Just so you know, banner ads used to be A LOT more effective:

BEHOLD: The First Banner Ad Ever – From 1994

“Hey” said the driver, “You guys just coming from [CLIENT NAME REDACTED]? You work there? Agency guys?”

He was driving a vehicle made by my client, was in a parking lot that I believe is affiliated with my client, but this seemed a little off.

“Yeah, agency,” I replied, feeling uneasy. Who was this guy? “We were at a workshop.”

“So what’d they have up there? New vehicles?”

This is when I started getting nervous. I gave my co-worker the “get the F^&K in the car, now,” look and curtly replied “Just learning about some vehicles.” and got in the car as he drove off.

I have no idea who he was. My memory is fuzzy, but he may have looked like this:

Who was he? A spy from a rival company? A journalist? An employee of my client just curious about what all the hubbub was about?

Who knows.

One of the things I love about working in the automotive industry is the Cold War, Arms Race way they go about their business. They talk about things like “marketshare” instead of “bomber gaps” but it’s pretty much the same thing.

One side comes out with something new. A new engine, a new transmission, some radically new vehicle. They desperately try to keep it a secret. They lock out the press until just the right time. They put stickers over the cameras on our phones when we go to learn about them (although they routinely overlook the front-facing cameras on my smartphones). And yet, they also have official channels for sharing information. They have competitive intelligence groups that work with their counterparts at the competition to understand what’s new and coming up. It’s the equivalent of an American embassy in Moscow during the 80′s.

Each side privately uses language about “beating up the guys down in [town where competitor's HQ is]” or “taking their lunch money.” But publicly it’s smiles and friendly ribbing at auto shows and in the trades.

They wrap vehicles in black plastic to hide new features:

See what I mean?

My favorite part of the business of advertising cars and trucks is the way people move around. If your agency has an auto client, they probably have an office in Detroit. And that Detroit office is staffed by people from Michigan who have made their careers out of advertising cars. They move from agency to agency following their clients. If you’re the account lead on Ford at Team Detroit, and Ford moves over to Goodby, guess who’s moving down the road to Goodby with them.

Most of the agencies’ offices are within walking distance of each other, they all know each other, they’ve alternately worked with and competed with the other players. It’s like something out of a John Le Carre novel.

And I love it.

Stan Richards, founder of the The Richards Group

And I have to say, it was pretty cool. I’ve been to many other agencies – Arnold, Digitas, Saatchi & Saatchi, StarCom/MediaVest, Weber Shandwick, Publicis, Goodby Silverstein & Partners, Sterling Rice, TDA, Hill Holiday, DeVries, MS&L, and countless others. But never has a founder of the agency taken the time to visit with me, to give me a tour, or tell me about the culture of the company he or she founded. Granted, most of them have long since passed away, moved on to other agencies, or retired, but still, this was cool. It wasn’t just cool because Stan Richards (and The Richards Group) are a big deal (they are famous for Motel 6 ads featuring Tom Bodett “We’ll leave the light on for you,” as well as all those Corona ads you love)**, but because he took the time out of his day to talk about how they work and why it makes a difference.

So here is an abridged version of that tour that I think is not just relevant to those who work in advertising, but to anyone who works in an office:

1. There are no VIPs at TRG. The culture of the office is more geared around tenure than title. Of course there are creative directors, and account leads, and junior planners, etc, but while title may get you more money or responsibility it doesn’t make you any better than anyone else in the company.
2. A culture of saying “hello.” Saying hello to people is really important at TRG. Stan stopped to say hello to several people on our tour, and knew all of them by name. And TRG isn’t a small company. They have somewhere north of 700 people I believe. Talking with people face-to-face happens a lot there and is best evidenced by numbers 3 and 4 below.
3. Take the stairs. Spanning almost 10 floors, the TRG offices have a central stairway that runs throughout the office. You can take an elevator but it’s really encouraged to take the stairs. Stan didn’t mention the health benefits of more walking, but did stress the social benefits. It gives you a lot of opportunity to say hi people you might not normally see in a day. And you might be able to catch someone you need to talk to, have a short conversation, and head off a 30 minute meeting. The central stairway also serves as a company meeting place, for all-staff announcements. They do this so that no one at the company receives important news before anyone else (see #1 above).
4. No emails. Okay, they do have email, and I’m sure they use it frequently. But emailing co-workers, who are in the same building as you, is discouraged. Take a short walk, go see the person, and discuss whatever you need to (maybe say “hi” to some people along the way). In a face-to-face conversation you can understand what someone wants/needs better and settle things immediately vs a long back-and-forth email chain.
5. No one sits next to someone who does the same job. There is no creative floor filled with ping pong tables and video games. There is no account management area where a bunch of suits talk about whatever it is they talk about. No one sits next to someone who does the same job. It breaks up groupthink. It encourages cross-discipline thinking.
6. Earn your window seat. Remember how there are no VIPs? This also applies to the seating arrangement. The best seats, those nearest the windows, are earned through tenure. You start off closest to the hallways and as people leave and you remain, you get closer and closer to a window.
7. Tenure is REALLY important. If you haven’t gotten that so far, you aren’t reading very carefully. In addition to earning you the best seats, tenure earned people parking spots in the building and conference rooms named for them. When TRG moved into the building they were given a set number  of parking spots. Rather than give these to the highest ranked people, they were assigned to the longest serving ones. And that’s also how they chose the names for the conference rooms.
8. Show your work. The hallways, common areas, and conference rooms at TRG are all covered in their clients’ work. I love this. We should all be striving to do work that we are proud of. And if you are proud of your work, show it off! And if you aren’t proud enough to hang it on the walls, maybe you need to go back and re-concept.
9. Nice copy rooms. Too often the copy machines are relegated to a closet, mail room, basement or dank, dingy corner. Not at TRG. They have nicely lit (with lots of windows), well stocked (with snacks) rooms for copiers, fax machines, etc. The truth is, some people use these machines more than others. They tend to be the lower ranked employees. But at TRG, no one is above anyone else, so why should some people get to work in nice sun-drenched conference rooms while others waste away in the darkness.

I don’t know that these will work everywhere, but I like to think that several of them could be implemented in most companies.

**Yes, I am aware they also do Chick-Fil-A ads, a company I cannot stand, but we’ll save my feelings on them for another post (and Twitter)

While their attitude and sense of self-righteousness is misplaced, the core of their argument is not. According to the Wall Street Journal article the Gawker author cited

The median number of applications world-wide fell 22% in 2012 for the two-year degrees, after a nearly 10% decline last year.

The big problem I see is not that an MBA is a bad investment, it’s often the motivation for getting one. Business school is not a good place to wait out a recession. It’s a place to find yourself (although it may help you change direction). It’s a place to go and get educated. And to acquire a set of skills that will help you achieve your goals.

If your goal is just “to get a job” DO NOT GO TO BUSINESS SCHOOL. If you don’t already have a good idea what it is you want to do, you are going to find out a very expensive lesson that MBAs don’t guarantee employment. In fact, outside of a handful of industries, having an MBA makes many recruiters automatically assume you are going to be expensive to hire.

In my opinion, education is never a bad investment. But going to school because you don’t know what to do with yourself, and you need to keep busy for two years is a waste of money. When I started my MBA at Boston College we had a girl drop out after 2 days of orientation. She was trying to figure out what she wanted to be when she grew up, her parents offered to foot the bill for grad school, so she enrolled. After two days of hearing how much work was ahead of her, she decided it wasn’t worth it.

Business school was an awesome experience for me. But when I went in I had a really clear picture of what I wanted to do on the other side. It turns out I don’t really do it. I found something I like even more. But this is rare. Most of my classmates who got good jobs after school came in knowing what they wanted, knowing what skills and experience they had to acquire, and then they did it. The ones who thought that an MBA was going to throw open doors and job offers would line up are the ones who have had 3+ different jobs since we graduated in 2007.

If you have two years to bust your ass, work harder than you have ever worked before, and rack up tons of debt to figure out what makes you happy, go do something more productive. Join the peace corps. Teach for America. Do something life changing that will give you perspective and an interesting story to tell. Business school will still be there when you get back. and having an interesting story about what you did during the recession may help you get into a better school.

I’m not saying don’t get an MBA. Just don’t do it because you don’t have anything else to do.

And this client/marketing brief is the key to getting good creative, and ultimately solving the client’s problem in an awesome way. 

But the client brief is often where the process can break down. This has nothing to do with clients being unable to write useful briefs (in my experience, poor briefs often come from clients not understanding what their agency partners need more than anything else). When the briefing process breaks down it is usually due to them asking the wrong questions – or providing the wrong information to the agency. Too often the clients focus only on the results – sell X units, get y likes on Facebook, introduce a new product, change a perception about our brand, etc.

I’m not going to talk about what the goals should be, what are achievable goals, or what aren’t (other than to say that “awareness” should never be a goal – that’s a default reaction to any good campaign). But rather, I am going to focus on what information produces the best results.

I’ve written several different versions of what I have named the “Call for Work” document. This form, when filled out by clients (in place of the standard client brief), provides the basis for a great conversation between the clients and the agency team. That conversation drives the creative brief, the brainstorms, and ultimately the finished product. The Call for Work that I frequently use with clients includes questions like:

• What is the problem or challenge we are trying to solve?
• Who are we talking to?
• What do we know about them that is relevant to this challenge?
• Why are we able to solve the problem?
• Why would they believe us?

As well as more tactical questions like:

• What are the key points or messages we need to ensure we cover?
• How will we be measured?

Recently a junior planner on my team shared an article by Winston Burch entitled “Setting the digital course forward.” It’s a great read and presents many ideas about the future of advertising that I have long subscribed to. In fact, although it is presented about digital, it really applies to all advertising (because all advertising has a digital component these days).

But most importantly, it contains several questions that need to be included in any client briefing:

• What’s the PR headline? - every idea should feel like news
• Describe the idea in 140 characters - it should be easy to share
• What problem does it solve? - stay focused on the business/marketing problem
• What makes it original and shareable? - is it a creative leap? why would someone share?
• Who’s the target? - who is the intended audience/user. stay focused on their needs
• What makes it worthy of repeated views, vists, or uses? - why would they come back?
• What do you want people to do after they leave? - great work inspires action

If you, or your client, can’t answer these questions, your project is in trouble before it ever gets started.

The point of this post isn’t to tell you that you’re doing it wrong, but rather to foster a discussion between you and your clients. Find a way to work these questions into that discussion. Make sure they understand why you need these answered. Your work will be better for it. The results for the client will be better as well.

And then you can all celebrate at Cannes.

I usually start out by talking about the problem that we are trying to solve. I make sure that we’re all on the same page regarding what we are supposed to be working against. 

But I don’t work in a vacuum. Rarely do people in advertising work alone. On anything. So usually, my strategy section is the upfront piece before we get to the creative work. It makes sense, right? Except, too often, people think you need to have an agenda slide in the beginning of the deck. And it usually looks something like this:

So what’s the problem?

The problem is that we go into a presentation fired up to show off some great work and as we get started, we bust out the most boring slide in the whole deck. I’m not a fan of any slide whose only purpose is for the presenter to read from. And that’s exactly what an agenda slide is.

The account lead tells the people who are being presented to exactly what they’re going to see while they nod along. Zero value gained. Precious time wasted.

What’s the point of these slides? To show how organized you are? To show that you can structure a deck? They’re going to see it in a matter of minutes. This isn’t a large written document that requires an index so you can jump ahead to a section while reading it by yourself. There’s nothing to be gained by saying “Here’s how we are going to present to you.”

Agendas work great when used to plan out your meeting. Write one, share it with the clients, make sure you are covering off on all the topics that need to be covered. Use that agenda to frame your presentation.

THEN THROW IT AWAY.

That’s exactly what I’ll tell you the next time you try to make me put one of these useless slides into my deck.

Maybe it’s because I know I won’t be getting the new phone (not up for an upgrade this round). Or maybe it’s because I know that no matter what they reveal tomorrow, it won’t be that much better than what I have right now. A slightly bigger screen? Cool, but not a game changer. LTE? faster would be nice, but not blowing my hair back. A better camera? A sharper screen? New dock connector? Please.

These are evolutions not revolutions.

A few years ago it felt like everything was getting awesomer every day. New apps were literally changing the way we live, new devices were radically blowing away their predecessor, and new websites were creating new forms of entertainment.

But now? Now everything feels very blah. Read TechCrunch and you see headline after headline about some new mobile CRM platform or yet another app to modify your photos. You see newer, sometimes better, versions of things we already have. Facebook is boring (although maybe that’s a reflection of my and my friends’ life stage).

Where is the awesomeness?

The digital toys and tech that used to get me so fired up has become a part of my everyday life and now I need more. It’s like a drug. I need another Uber. I need another Hulu. I need another first generation iPhone.

And yet, I don’t need “another” anything. I need a NEW. I need something I can’t even imagine.

Has the pace of innovation slowed? Have we mastered everything there is to master? Every so often someone comes out with a stupid prediction like that and quickly proved wrong. In the past, the technology itself was rapidly changing as we moved from analog to digital. But as digital technology evolved the revolutionary-ness of it slowed. Today’s computers aren’t that different from the first Macintosh. They’re faster, more powerful, have WAY more features. But if you brought someone from 1984 to 2012 and showed them a computer they could probably identify it. I doubt the same would hold true from the average person from 1964.

So what do we have to look forward to? What are you looking forward to most?

Related articles

• The Awesome, Impossible Feature You’ll Wish The iPhone 5 Could Have (gizmodo.co.uk)
• Is This the Last Great iPhone Launch? (mashable.com)
• Wake me up when the iPhone 42 comes out (venturebeat.com)

Nike+ FuelBand tracks your activity through a sport-tested accelerometer. Then translates every move into NikeFuel. Nike+ FuelBand tracks running, walking, dancing, basketball – and dozens of everyday actions. It also syncs up with a motivational web and mobile experience. So put it on and get moving

And it looks like this:

Basically it’s a fancy pedometer. “NikeFuel points” are a proprietary system Nike created to allow you to compare your performance across activities and with other people. So if I’m a runner and you’re a rower, we can compete over who is more active. Woo hoo, right? But that’s not the important part.

What it really does is guilt and shame you into being more active. Every day you have a goal to reach, 2,000 or more NikeFuel points. You can check your progress throughout the day and see how close you are to achieving your goal. And that’s where the guilt/shame comes in.

Today was a low energy day for me. I sat in a 4 hour workshop, then drove to the airport, then sat at the airport, and then on a plane. I didn’t even hit my ridiculously low goal of 2000 NikeFuel points per day (I’ve only had it a week, I started with the lowest goal to get a baseline before upping it). Ordinarily after a day like this I’d hit the couch. And then I’d go to sleep.

But with the FuelBand, my glowing, flashing reminder that I was a lazy sack of crap today, I forced myself to go to the gym this evening and make sure I met my goal (I wasn’t that far off, from walking around today, etc). I even took the stairs to and from the gym, and the laundry room (several times), which I don’t normally do. This wasn’t even public shaming, it was just my own sense of guilt. My own sense that I would be upset with myself if I didn’t hit a totally arbitrary goal.

That’s some powerful shit.

People have been talking about feedback loops for a long time. It’s nothing new. But it sure is powerful. Simply by measuring something you can encourage people to change it. It’s how Weight Watchers works.

The act of measuring is much more powerful than the actual numbers. For instance, one of the first days I had the FuelBand I spent 5 hours in a car and earned 1200+ points. That was almost half my daily goal. There’s no way that riding in a car was half the activity I needed for the day. Additionally, I first started wearing the FuelBand on my right (dominant) hand. But after racking up some impressive amounts of points, I decided that eating, drinking, talking with my hands, and other movements really shouldn’t be counting towards my activity goals. So I switched it to my left hand and I’ve definitely been earning fewer points.

But again, it’s not about the number of points you get it. It’s about setting the appropriate goal and then forcing yourself to beat it.

Will I keep it up? I hope so. We’ll see how easy it is come winter. And how guilty I feel.

Related articles

• My First 48 Hours With Nike FuelBand – The Good, The Bad And The Frustrating (businessinsider.com)
• Nike wants to give you fuel for your every move (newscientist.com)