The official blog of Ignition Consulting Group
From every corner of the world, agency executives are reporting the same trends in new business. It’s more challenging than ever to get the attention of a promising new business prospect. All of the factors that make it more difficult to get a consumer’s attention come into play in trying to get a prospect’s attention. People simply have more ways to shut out the information and communication they don’t want …
Agencies want to capture more of the value they create for their clients; in other words, earn more for what they do. The important first step is to understand the nature of value, including how, when, and where value is created …
At a time when prospective clients are scarce, it’s easy to be lured into the belief that some new business is better than no new business. The self-talk among agency executives is that the account “will help keep the lights on” …
If your experience of going to work in the morning feels like the movie Groundhog Day, you and your agency are probably suffering the effects of being caught in a vicious cycle. Vicious cycles are most often caused by employing a “harvesting” strategy to your business, where the agency seeks to wring all the revenues it can from current clients by delivering the normally-expected services instead of investing the time and effort in developing a business model that will help the agency earn revenues in the future …
When you say that your strategy is to be the best, the best-known, the most creative, the most respected, your strategy is not what you say it is. Your strategy is not what you say, but what you do. Your real strategy is not in your planning documents, but in your website, your new business presentations, your social media program, and your training and career development program …
A lot of advertising industry pundits preach the value of agency positioning and differentiation, but not many of them can really define it. Positioning isn’t just about being different. Featuring a laughing hyena on your home page is different, but it hardly qualifies as a positioning …
Faster. Cheaper. Vendor. Three words that characterize one of the leading issues agencies have with their clients right now. Many agencies feel they have been pushed down the client value chain into the same category as printers, having lost their status as professional advisors …
Would a prospective client travel 1,000 miles to do business with your firm? That’s one of the litmus tests of a strong agency positioning strategy. Unless you’re satisfied attracting local business from the local market (and some agencies are), you should devote some thought to how you can become what I call a “destination agency” …
Do you know the territory, or are you just a tourist? As artist Julian Schnabel wrote, tourists many have significant technical skills, but they don’t really know the territory. They know how to get some things done, but they don’t have deep expertise in a particular area …
It’s no coincidence that the 50 fastest growing brands in America have one important thing in common: they have committed themselves to an ideal that transcends making money. According to studies by former P&G CMO Jim Stengel, there is a definite cause and effect relationship between strong ideals and strong financial performance. What’s true for marketers is true for agencies. Those with the strongest ideals – or principles – also produce the strongest work, have the strongest cultures, and enjoy the strongest reputations …
(CLICK HEADLINE TO READ FULL ARTICLE)
Advertising agency income “per unit of work” has fallen 40% during a steady 20-year decline. So reports agency consultant and advisor Michael Farmer, whose research demonstrates that agency staffs are being squeezed to deliver increasing workloads at a time when fees are declining faster than costs. The solution to better margins is obviously not to work harder or do a better job of collecting timesheets. To be able to return to the profit margins they had 20 years ago, agencies need new, different revenue streams …
(CLICK HEADLINE TO READ FULL ARTICLE)
What is the primary reason agencies don’t deliver more innovative solutions for their clients? Lack of talent? Lack of time? In my experience, the latter is much more of a factor than the former. Most successful agencies have some pretty smart people. What most agencies don’t have is a commitment to breakthrough work. They don’t have in place incentives that reward and encourage collaboration and innovative, interdisciplinary problem solving. In fact, most firms have clear disincentives for teamwork; which is a curious irony for an industry that sells “creativity” …
(CLICK HEADLINE TO READ FULL ARTICLE)
No activity within an advertising agency gets as much time, attention, and energy as the new business pitch. Countless times I’ve heard agency professionals confess that “We’re at our best when we’re developing new business presentations” and “Our best creative work is usually for new business prospects” …
One view of the future of our business is that increasingly agencies will make the majority of their revenues from the intellectual property they create instead of the hours they work. The “work for hire” model that has persisted for the last half-century is becoming a less and less profitable way to make a living.
You would like your employees – or team members – to work harder. To care more about the agency and its clients. To put in more time, show more effort, or do a better job. Agency managers reason that what’s needed is to motivate employees with the promise of more money – a chance to earn more if they’ll work more. Many agency CEOs embark on complicated bonus programs using formulas based on things like billable time and income targets …
