I wish I did that
December 20, 2013 Leave a comment
Two simple and beautiful ads for a bookstore in Brazil.
Via the blog I Believe in Advertising
Don’t email angry.
November 9, 2013 Leave a comment
If you ever think “should I send this email?” you probably shouldn’t. That way you don’t send emails like this beauty, which I angrily wrote at 10:30 the other night:
I’ll do what can about slides but I’ve said since the beginning that it was a mistake to promise a social strategy and obviously the plan was written by someone who doesn’t understand social strategy at all.
You had none of the inputs required to formulate a solid strategy but why let that stop you? And for that matter why not just assign an impossible task to someone else, it won’t be your problem, will it?
You may be sick of pushing me on this, well I’m sick of you not understanding how strategy works and expecting miracles.
Thanks!
Ezra
This one was wisely left to the unsent drafts folder, and then the trash (with a quick stopover on the blog). Especially being so close to the end of year, 360 feedback, promotion nominations, raises, bonuses, etc.
Looks like I dodged a bullet this time. The moral of the story is, as good as it may feel to write these things in the heat of the moment, it’s probably best to leave them unsaid.
How to present to an ad agency.
February 20, 2013 Leave a comment
If you work in advertising (and even more so on the media side), you have attended MANY vendor presentations. Sometimes they are from media companies who want to show you why you should be buying space on their sites, or partnering with them on content creation. Some are measurement companies, social dashboards, app developers, Facebook community managers, the list goes on and on.
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).
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
“Here’s $2 and a chance to win a vacation” – The most effective marketing you’ll see all day.
February 19, 2013 Leave a comment
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:
The Automotive Arms Race
October 9, 2012 Leave a comment
Two weeks ago, after attending an all day “immersion session” about a new vehicle my clients in Detroit are launching I was getting into my car in the satellite parking lot when a car pulled up next to me.
“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:
Lessons on Advertising Culture from Stan Richards
October 8, 2012 Leave a comment
I recently had the opportunity to take a tour of the offices of The Richards Group, led by the legendary Stan Richards.
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. Read more of this post
Kicking off
September 18, 2012 Leave a comment
As a planner, I am often most involved at the beginning of a new project. The part when clients are coming to their agency with a problem they need help solving. This usually comes in the form of a “client brief” or a “marketing brief” (not to be confused with the creative brief).
And this client/marketing brief is the key to getting good creative, and ultimately solving the client’s problem in an awesome way. Read more of this post
Screw your agenda
September 17, 2012 Leave a comment
I write a lot of presentations. Almost entirely using PowerPoint. A big part of being a planner is being able to tell a story. The story of the brand, the story of consumer, the story of the strategy we need to create against, the story of the strategy and why the work you are about to see is the best way to address the consumer problem/challenge.
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. Read more of this post
Call me a hypocrite but…
July 25, 2012 Leave a comment
I guess it’s hypocritical to like things like this AND work in advertising, but I can’t help it. I was raised with my father frequently lamenting about the “nightmare of capitalism” and while I may not have fully embraced it, I still get fired up by this sort of thing.
Click on the image to see others from this project from Brandalism (which by the way, is an AWESOME name for what they do).
And a shout-out to the blog ObsessiveCompulsive for finding this and sharing it with me.
We’re all storytellers.
June 11, 2012 4 Comments
By “we’re all” I mean advertising people, who I assume make up the majority of this blog’s readership (the remainder of you came here searching for “Kim Kardashian Hot Tube” whatever the hell that is – the link is workplace safe, don’t worry).
And by storytellers, I mean that we all need to create interesting narratives in order to our job. I don’t care if you’re an account guy or girl, a copywriter, a planner, a experience designer, or a art director. If you can’t tell the story, you won’t be successful. Account people need to sell in work, ideas, strategies and budgets to the clients. Copywriters and art directors need to tell a story to the consumer that resonates with them and makes them care. Strategists & planners need to tell a story about the consumer in a way that intrigues the client and sets up the creative as the ideal solution to their problem.
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