eel slap

I’ve been reading Adam Singer’s blog the future buzz lately and one of his recent posts, Most Marketing And PR Agency Blogs Are Unreadable was a fairly stirring indictment of the state of ad agency and PR blogging. While I think there’s a bit of blanket generalization in the post, for the most part, it’s right-on. The […]

frontline combat

Hire someone internally to handle your agency new business effort or look outside to a company like RSW/US or others out there. A tough call perhaps, the good news is you’re thinking about it. (You are, right?) Let’s focus on that internal hire, and more specifically the hiring process for the purposes of this post. […]

There have been a few articles lately bemoaning the state of the advertising industry and specifically how some in the industry have left big agencies to make it on their own by opening an agency themselves. The most recent is titled “Creative Exodus in Adland: It’s Just Not ‘Fun’ Anymore.” And it’s eye-opening on a […]

old people

In our most recent survey on agency new business, Agency executives state that the top reason why they find it a lot harder to obtain new business this year, relative to years past is because it’s a lot harder to break through to prospects. Typically, this “reason why” ranks among the higher reasons why Agency […]

Village

In our recent survey on Ad Agency new business, principals of Agencies note they continue to struggle with finding and maintaining effective new business managers. 69% of all respondents in the survey stated they replaced (on one or more occasions) the new business manager they brought into the Agency to help them build business. The […]

things that might kill you

A follow up to a comment on our post Don’t Know Enough About My Company. First, a quick set-up of that  post to give you some perspective. The post was based off our then most-recent survey and the specific finding that “78% of senior marketing executives stated agencies don’t know enough about their company when […]

wall

I received an email from a salesperson this week that was similar to many I receive: giant blocks of text, staring at me, unyielding, from my screen. I was immediately exhausted and the delete button became my savior. Interesting that Marketing Profs had an article last week discussing this very issue, titled Two Sure Ways to Make […]

Used to be BFF

Ad agency new business, you’re such a fickle mistress. As an agency principal and/or new business director, you’re given a great deal of advice, but one channel you rarely see mentioned as of late is direct mail, and more specifically, the envelope.   The envelope gets no love, does it? It’s funny, we’ve actually heard […]

Dare

  In previous posts we’ve discussed the fact that, however you might initially garner a prospect’s attention, at some point you’re going to have to actually talk to them, selling them in some fashion. Along those lines, a question posed several weeks ago on the Marketing Profs LinkedIn group page was titled “Please don’t read from a script.” […]