Phil's Blog

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

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

Odds and Ends, Literally

Here are a few things that from my recent reviews that I found quite odd. And they helped guarantee that the agency doing them didn't win.

• About halfway into their presentation, one agency brought in a string quartet to play. While I cannot reveal their reason (which related to the client's product), it quickly became uncomfortable for almost everyone.
• Twice I have seen agencies order pizza at the beginning of their pitches promising to end when the pizza arrived. In each case, they were right; the pizza arrived at "the end."
• Please no a cappella either. One agency's presenters formed a sorta barbershop quartet and sang. Sadly for them, there was no harmony.

These are not the only odd occurrences. I'll tell some more stories in coming weeks. Like the one where the agency used water balloons...

Phil

Ad Age: Undermining Advertising Since 1930

"Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one's courage." - Anais Nin

Most adages teach us something positive. Not Ad Age which over the years has helped turn advertising into a commodity more than any officer in an advertising holding company ever could. 

This post isn't going to be a love mark for the Crain publication. They've supported the mergers and acquisitions of thirty years that lead to a lack of confidence in advertising by agencies themselves and, as a result, advertisers. They've promulgated their drivel with guys like Al Ries (of the 'iPhone will fail' fame), Bob Garfield (a toxic anti-capitalist) and a front man named Rance Crain who could win the Pulitzer Prize for Destructive Boredom if there were such a thing.

Today, for example, Ad Age tells us that Crispin Porter + Bogusky hasn't helped Burger King surpass McDonald's in the five years it has handled the entire account suggesting therefore that it has failed. Ad Age is once again trying to eat its young.

Make up your minds, boys. Can advertising be effective or not? Never mind answering. You've made clear your views.

Closing adage acronym: TANSTAAFL ("There ain't no such thing as a free lunch." - Robert Heinlien)

In a recent agency review, I am absolutely certain that none of the agencies participating in the review ever heard the word. The word I am referring to is a verb. It refers to one thing none of the agencies did. In fact, few agencies do it. That word is

rehearse.

Mommy, what's a newspaper?

Almost four years ago, I wrote a blog post "Daddy, what's a newspaper?" which forecast the decline in newspaper appeal and circulation. Since then, I've posted three updates.

Newspapers have failed for most part when adding an online version because they've done so without any marketing strategy whatsoever. None. Weil, unless you count putting the paper online as an actual marketing thought.

Inevitable failure comes for many reasons. They're cheap about it, both in spending and planning. They use juniors to do the conversion, those recently out of tech school who know nothing about marketing. And, principally because they, as many clients have done, assume that the Web is simply a print vehicle without paper.

This lazy, uneducated view is still being espoused. Here's an excerpt from a September 21st interview with Tina Gaudoin, editor of The Wall Street Journal magazine on WWD.com: "Asked if the online-only issues specifically would be adapted for the Web, Gaudoin replied: 'They’ll be specifically adapted in the sense that it’ll be online. It will include the same length, the same quality, the same integrity as the magazine.'"  

The more things change, the more non-thinkers fall behind.

Phil

Never, My Love.

Somewhere in the distant past, ad agencies got the idea that their clients loved them. While that love has faded a bit during down economic times, love will return again.

Creatives, who usually require confirmation of the quality of their work, have always craved praise. One only needs to see the plethora of awards competitions as evidence. Media, account and research folks have few awards and get little recognition as great planners, thinkers and analysts.

What many agency people fail to recognize, however, is that clients seldom think of any personality, product or company other than theirs. When agencies are with them, they talk about themselves and their brands. That's what their agencies talk about, too. Most clients, except those in management who negotiate agency contracts, never think of their agencies as businesses.

Nevertheless, I meet agency principal after agency principal waiting for the recession to end and for clients to love them once more. 

Friends, they never have and they never will.

Phil

Lee Clow said

"Impact requires craft."

"Try asking your doctor to do a little angioplasty on spec."

"If you'd put it in your Powerpoint deck, don't put it in your ad."

"New does not necessarily equal good. Old does not necessarily equal bad. Exercise wisdom accordingly."

The Boys And Girls of the Web

"You don't get what you don't pay for. Even if you pay for it you often don't get it." - Phil Schwartz

This blog post won't win me much favor amongst the twenty-somethings who sell their Web abilities for rates just slightly above what they charged last year for baby-sitting.

I am referring to the boys and girls who offer Web development services, create Web sites and plan Search programs for pennies compared with advertising agencies and digital companies with brick, mortar and actual marketing experience.

Of course, many companies suffering recession-worn budgets choose these boys and girls for two reasons:

1. They're cheap.

2. The company hiring them is staffed with out-of-touch or frightened management who do not understand online marketing.

These digital boys and girls have no idea what marketing outside of a grocery store is. They cannot provide intelligent perspectives or strategic thinking because they've never done it before.

If you are interested in some greater and effective counsel, email me. I'm older and I can help. I do magic but no baby-sitting.

Phil

Microsoft Chooses "Follow" Again

"Lead, follow or get out of the way." - Thomas Paine

Microsoft chooses "follow." As Microsoft and Yahoo announce their 10-year search deal, we are reminded again of the reactive, not innovative culture of Microsoft. 

Lead by a the uninspiring Steve Ballmer, the company achieves second place once again. Sometimes, they seem to shoot for third. 

They missed Search the first and second time around opening the door for Google and Yahoo. They copied the iPod five years to the month after it was introduced by Apple with Zune. They purchased Razorfish and droves of the Web's best minds fled that company. (Now it's up for sale.) X Box is not leading although they briefly benefited when competitors couldn't deliver more popular game systems to the market. And let's not talk about wistful Vista.

I guess the mistake is to assume that Microsoft wants to lead. Clearly, they don't. If you were Google would you be shaking in your shoes? Probably not.

So, to remind myself of their firm commitment to refrain from innovation, I shall apply that lower case style of so many digitally savvy folks and spell their name microsoft. Shh. Whisper it from now on.