Turn Your Biz Dev Efforts Upside Down for Growth & Profit
Agencies everywhere are finding business development to be a greater and greater challenge. Unfortunately, the business development strategies of many agencies are not up to the challenge. Unattainable growth rates are often needed to achieve agency growth objectives The investment required and the low odds of winning pitches is debilitating The stress on organic growth […]
Another One Bites the Dust: Modern Agencies Fail to Differentiate
WPP announced a few days ago that venerable agency Grey would be folded underneath AKQA. Another one bites the dust. Grey – founded in 1917 – isn’t the first historic brand to be purchased by a holding company and eventually retired. Just a sampling of agencies that have disappeared or been merged into other brands […]
Bruce Springsteen & Perfect Pitch(ing)
Written by Stephen Boehler & Lindsay O’Neil I learned the most important lesson about new business pitching from record producer Jimmy Iovine. In 2013 I was a proud dad sitting in the audience at the University of Southern California’s commencement ceremony. The keynote speaker was famous music producer and co-founder of Beats headphones, Jimmy Iovine. […]
5 Questions about CMOs & the C-suite with Huge’s Matt Weiss
Matt Weiss, President of Huge Brooklyn, has already put together quite a storied career and he’s still an up and coming talent. With a background leading global accounts at McCann like Mastercard, serving as chief of staff at KBS+ and global agency CMO at Havas, Matt has seen it all and stopped for a few […]
Dooley Tombras on Connecting Data + Creativity for Business Results
Written by Stephen Boehler Dooley Tombras is a lot of things: third generation agency leader; a magnetic personality; passionate marketer; and boundlessly energetic. Recently, we spoke with Dooley about the path that took him and his agency to a very distinctive, successful positioning. The Tombras agency has been one of the fastest growing agencies in […]
The Current Agency-Client Business Environment and the Opportunity Ahead
Lately, we’ve been asked a number of questions on the current agency-client business environment. Agencies are eager to hear what clients are currently thinking. We’ve also been asked numerous questions about filling the pipeline. So, to be as helpful as possible, we thought we’d share what we’ve been hearing in our conversations with clients, what […]
Mark Figliulo on Storytellers for the Information Age
Mark Figliulo is not only one of the world’s most decorated and accomplished creatives, he’s as thoughtful and nice as they come. His FIG Agency has been growing rapidly since its inception and is routinely an AdAge A List firm. We were lucky to pry a few minutes of his time to hear him talk about positioning his agency for success.
10 Agency Biz Dev Tips
For several years the team at Mercer Island Group has been contributing to an annual “One Piece of Advice” publication on the topic of business development. Here are 10 of our best tips collected in one place: Don’t Be Generic “Teaching new business development folks in agencies to sound just like everyone else in the […]
How to Position Your Agency for New Business Success
Written by Steve Boehler & Barry O’Neil Today we’ll be looking at creating an effective positioning statement for your agency. Three Critical Aspects of Effective Differentiation While it’s impossible to create a completely original positioning statement (that is still clear and effective), the differentiators your agency already has can be combined to create a powerful […]
5 Tips for Presenting Your Solutions in a Pitch
Written by Steve Boehler & Barry O’Neil So you fought your way through the RFP process and finally have a chance to show off your solution in front of the prospect. In the lead-up, you hopefully did the hard work of analyzing their business challenges, finding rich insights to leverage, and developing a winning strategy. […]