Phil's Blog

Five Things Your Digital Folks Didn't Tell You About The Internet

Free for the asking. 

If you email me about this, I will send you back the five things your digital folks (whatever titles they may have) did not tell you about the Internet.

I will also offer questions relating to each of the five that you really must answer.

So, drop everything now. Click on this: email Phil link. And ask for the: 

Five Things Your Digital Folks Didn't Tell You About The Internet.

If you don't have digital folks, email me and ask anyway.

Phil

What We've Got Here

"What we've got here is a failure to communicate." - Strother Martin as the prison Captain in the film Cool Hand Luke

Failure to listen to prospective clients isn't the only mistake I observe ad agencies and PR firms making in their new business efforts. 

It is, perhaps, the most significant error overall, because this failure occurs at every stage of the new business evaluation process.

No need to state the irony here. If it isn't apparent, you may stop reading now. 

What I would add is that my one-day Business Building seminars enumerate all the keys to success and failure in presenting to new potential clients. Almost forty agencies and PR firms so far have heard both the common and the remarkable failures in the management sessions I have conducted at their shops. 

While I prefer focusing on the positive and pro-active ideas, it's important to know what will get you booted from consideration. And what you must do in order to win.

For your own session, please email me.

Phil

The Popular Strategy

Need a solution for your sales slump? Trying to build brand loyalty? Well, do what all sophisticated marketers doing these days: go social.

Wanna be popular? Then go for what's popular!

Sometimes, when something doesn't make sense, you do it anyway. Don't you remember high school?

Seriously, ad agencies telling their clients and pitching potential clients that all their answers are in the social media are advising from the shallow end of the pool.

So, befriend, poke and tweet. But do little thinking, too. What will get people to try your product and what won't? 

Monkey see, monkey do is not a sound marketing strategy. Even if it's popular.

Consulting For You -- A Fourth Anniversary

This blog celebrates its fourth anniversary this month. Hooray!

To celebrate, here is my very first blog post from November 2005:

“My greatest strength as a consultant is to be ignorant and ask a few questions.” --Peter F. Drucker After I retired from 30 years at General Mills, Six Flags and, on the agency side, from Campbell-Mithun (Minneapolis) and my own advertising agency partnerships, I traveled, I relaxed and I taught for a semester at the University of Florida. But I became a little bored. What to do? I love capitalism and, especially, marketing and advertising. So I became a part-time marketing consultant, part-time retiree. In the first two years of this new consulting career, I have been hired to coordinate ad agency (and PR firm) reviews. I have also helped advertisers (aka "clients") to negotiate better, often less expensive compensation agreements. I love it. If you and your management want to improve your marketing, conduct an agency review, negotiate a better compensation agreement, please call or email me. Let’s talk. Thank you. Phil Schwartz

The Absolute Best Ad Agency Web Site, Bar None

In many of the Business Building seminars I conduct for advertising agency management, I am asked what agency sites I admire and believe to be most effective.

I am careful to be objective, so I provide several examples, usually from agencies outside my principal geographical area of work. One who advises clients on their agency reviews must not show bias.

Since the agency whose site I hold in such high regard is not likely to compete in the reviews I do, there is no loss of objectivity. 

Please email me (including your name, title and direct business contact information). I will email you back today with the URL.

Phil

Coming tomorrow: The absolute best ad agency site on the Web.

You will agree. 

Tomorrow, I will reveal what is absolutely, positively the best Web site of any advertising agency in the United States, its possessions, outlying islands and much of the rest of the world.

But there's a catch. You will have to email me to get the link. See how lead-building is done?

Phil

To Be Digital or Not To Be

Report from the agency search front:

Lately, when ad agencies claim capabilities in digital products, the question is not whether you create iPhone apps. It's -- How many have you created / are you creating?

Phil

Where the money is.

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously responded: "Because that's where the money is."

Today, finding sizable clients is a challenge. Winning them is not just harder, it's often not what the winner expected. Clients embellish.

Ad agencies (and PR firms) have always embellished their abilities, experience, influence and size. And embellish is a kind word, believe me.

Nevertheless, the shock agencies experience when actual client budgets are disclosed (after the win) is significant. (Agencies have told me: "They lied.") Considering the investment in new business pitching plus promises made during the agency search process, what' an agency to do?

As the tech crowd says, there are solutions. For good ones, call me. I can help.

Phil

If Bankers Aren't Extending Credit, Why Should You?

If I had a nickel for every time an agency told me some clients haven't paid them for months, I wouldn't be earning my keep. I work for more than nickels and I usually get paid the day service is rendered.

That may be the luxury of a consultancy. Still I am somewhat amazed by how long ad agencies and other service companies will extend and re-extend credit to their clients because of the fear of losing those clients.

While I understand the optimism that things will get better for those clients, isn't is better to allow your company to simply get smaller now, rather than allowing your clients to cause it later, leaving you with debt?

The US government has forceably funded both struggling and non-struggling banks. Today, banks can borrow at virtually no interest then turn around and earn a guaranteed two percent or more on Treasury bills. Despite the government's goal of reopening the flow of credit, the banks are not loaning money. So why should you?

Since you've already cut back bonuses, salaries and people two or three times, why not face up to failing clients who just might pull you under?

Phil

Feckless

Psst!

Mismanaging an ad agency's future by ignoring changes in media and markets is its own punishment. 

I can name three advertising agencies in the South that are so set in their ways that no client that I ever represent will ever hire them. 

Hold on. I'm not being nasty or snippy. I neither vote in nor decide the agency reviews I conduct. My clients do. I am simply pointing out here, in a forum where the agencies' identities won't be revealed, that being feckless is not a strategy for success.

Phil