If an outside observer remarked that your agency team appear “as busy as bees”, that could be a good thing. Particularly, if they are busy on the right things – things that matter for moving your clients and your own firm forward. However, that’s not what is most important about the Honey Bee when it […]
Tenacious. Competitive. These are just a couple of words to describe the Badger, one of the animals highlighted in our Infographic, 8 Animal Traits You Need to Future-Proof your Agency. It’s fairly obvious that these are traits an Agency needs to possess for success. But yet another trait of the Badger is very relevant […]
A survey that we run continuously with Marketers individually establishes benchmarks on how their current agency is performing. One of the questions asks Marketers to rate how reliable their agency is in consistently doing an excellent job on a 10-point scale. This goes beyond creative, media planning and buying; it includes the agency’s ability to […]
“When we are planning for a conversation or meeting, typically we think about the task and objectives. But how much time do we plan the relationship?…how can we connect at a deeper level…?” These lines jumped out at me as I recently read excerpts of an interview conducted by the Center for Creative […]
The Lexus Hoverboard: this is a product concept that grabs the imagination doesn’t it? From the Jetsons to Back to the Future, the concept may not be new, but Lexus has a prototype. Forbes quoted Lexus EVP, Mark Templin reflecting on the culture that underlies this commitment to innovate: “At Lexus, we constantly challenge ourselves […]
“NO” stings. A recent Wall Street Journal post offering a CEO’s recommendations for dealing with rejection brought my thoughts to remarks people make when they hear about my work. “Oh!” they say. “Where do you get the courage to pick up the phone and call people you’ve never met before and try to sell them […]
This past week Tony Mikes, the founder of Second Wind, passed away after a year-long struggle with brain cancer. In 1988, after many years as an agency owner, Tony founded Second Wind: his self-professed “second life.” Tony felt strongly that smaller agencies needed resources and information designed to help them build better agencies and it […]
Agency New Business is tough business. Many agencies make it harder than it should be by doing it the wrong way when reaching out to a marketing prospect. As an example, you can have the greatest sales person in the world, but if they don’t understand your agency, or they pound and pound and pound, […]
So many things in agency new business are elementary. They should be obvious, but they are SO fundamental, they’ve just become part of the landscape. Basics that unfortunately could be a decisive factor in winning new business. In our work this week we observed several oversights and slip-ups (made by OTHER companies!) that […]
Having now managed over 30 searches for brands like Mariano’s, Mercy Health, Jack-in-the-Box, Duck Tape, Mizkan Foods, Cayman Islands, and Motorola, we haven’t seen it all…but we’ve seen quite a bit. Here are some of the “best of the worst” of agency searches – and some pointers for agencies if they’re listening/watching/reading this post! In […]
