By Category: New Business Tools/Resources
TED brings them together
Published on April 04, 2011
One of the most satisfying aspects of working in the ad industry is knowing some of the people and companies that create ads that move you. Sometimes, those ads appear together. The folks at TED did this with the ten winners of their recent "Ads Worth Spreading" competition.
These ads "run longer than the TV-standard 30 seconds. And that's the key! In 2-3 minutes, there's enough time to really tell a story, share an idea, make an authentic human connection, become unforgettable."
This is really good stuff if you're an ad agency new business person -- you know how the phone rings when it's your agency that creates work like this.
So, sit back, relax, and click here to view ten inspiring ads. And, another fourteen honorable mentions, if you're so inclined.
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Be careful...
Published on March 23, 2011
With Salesforce.com's acquisition of Jigsaw, you can now easily export contacts from Salesforce.com to Jigsaw. (For more on crowd-sourced data sources like Jigsaw, click here.)
However, ad agencies, as well as any other Salesforce.com user, must now recognize the significant intellectual property issues presented by this merger. Most importantly:
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Whose contacts are in your current Salesforce.com account, or your internal database?
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Do you have the right to export these contacts to a third party? If so, under what circumstances?
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May that third party sell them?
This is important as your agency may be opening itself up to potential legal liability. Consider:
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If you export contacts, purchased from a third party, into Jigsaw, what is your potential liability for violating the third party's license agreement?
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If you import contacts from Jigsaw that belong to a third party, what is your legal liability for doing so?
Here are extracts from the license agreements of popular providers of new business prospecting information to ad agencies:
The List:
You are specifically prohibited from: (a) using or permitting the use of Information to prepare an original database or a comparison of the Software to other databases that are sold, rented, published, or furnished in any manner by or to a third party; (b) using or permitting the use of Information for the purpose of compiling, enhancing, verifying, supplementing, adding to, or deleting from any mailing list, business directory, or other compilation of information that is sold, rented, published or furnished in any manner to a third party.
Access Confidential:
The Content on this Web site is for use by the Subscriber and its Users only and not for commercial exploitation. A User may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, rent, lease, loan, sell, sublicense, or create derivative works from either this Web site or its Content. A User may not use any network monitoring or discovery software to determine the site architecture or extract information about usage, individual entities or users. A User may not use any robot, spider, other automatic software and/or devices or manual processes to monitor or copy this Web site or its Content without the Provider’s written consent. A User may not copy, modify, reproduce, republish, distribute, display, or transmit to third parties outside the User’s agency network for commercial, non-profit or public purposes any or all portions of this Web site without the Provider’s written consent. A User may not use or otherwise export, or re-export, this Web site or its Content pursuant to the export control laws and regulations of the United States of America. Any unauthorized use of this Web site or its Content is expressly prohibited.
Redbooks (Lexis Nexis):
The Content on the Site is provided solely for your personal use and not for commercial exploitation. You may not decompile, reverse engineer, disassemble, rent, lease, loan, sell, sublicense, or create derivative works from the Site or the Content. Nor may you use any network monitoring or discovery software to determine the site architecture, or extract information about usage, individual identities or users. You may not use any robot, spider, other automatic software or device, or manual process to monitor or copy our Site or the Content without our prior written permission. You may not copy, modify, reproduce, republish, distribute, display, or transmit for commercial, non-profit or public purposes all or any portion of the Site, except to the extent permitted above. You may not use or otherwise export or re-export the Site or any portion thereof, the Content or any software available on or through the Site in violation of the export control laws and regulations of the United States of America. Any unauthorized use of the Site or its Content is expressly prohibited.
Hoovers (D&B):
The Services are licensed for Customer's internal use only and subject to any restrictions set forth in the Order. Customer will not provide Information, or other Services to others, whether directly in any media or indirectly through incorporation in a database, marketing list, report or otherwise, or use or permit the use of Information to generate any statistical or other information that is or will be provided to third parties (including as the basis for providing recommendations to others); use or permit the use of Information to prepare any comparison to other information databases that is or will be provided to third parties.
As you can see, if you've purchased information from one of these third parties, and have exported or plan to export it to Jigsaw, you are clearly violating their license agreement(s). For these third parties, the natural next step is legal proceedings. It remains to be seen if it's against Salesforce.com, their clients, or both.
My recommendation is to go back and re-read the applicable license agreements - your legal obligations - if you've purchased data from a third party anytime in the last few years. And then, be very careful to document what you export to Jigsaw, if anything.
Better yet, just don't do it.
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The Lure of Free
Published on March 17, 2011
What a great sales pitch: take your in-house prospecting list, upload it to a crowdsourced-based website like Jigsaw or NetProspex, and then download an equal number of "clean" contacts - for free.
I can hear you thinking about it..."I can have twice as many contacts with just a couple of clicks of my mouse." It sounds too good to be true!
Before you take the plunge, however, I suggest you think through a few important questions:
- What will you upload? Will you upload:
- Current clients?
- Networking contacts?
- Friends of the firm?
- Contacts you've painstakingly found on your own?
- Lists you've acquired from 3rd party vendors?
- Has your management team thought through the consequences of sharing this information with the world? Once you upload it, it's gone and can't be retrieved or taken back later. Do you really want your valuable contacts in the hands of your competitors?
- If you want to upload a list you've acquired, are you legally allowed to do so? Have you reviewed "the fine print" - license agreement - from the list provider? Most, if not all, restrict you from sharing data with anyone outside your firm. Other providers allow you "single-use"; if you share you are clearly violating their agreement.
- What will you get in return? We've heard many stories about people uploading their old, out-of-date information, with the hope of exchanging it for new, clean information. Think about this for a minute: if you (and a few hundred or thousand people) upload their garbage, what are you going to get in return?
We at The List have heard so many stories about inaccurate information that we recently decided to do a test on 2,500 contacts that we purchased from one of the two providers whose logos appear above. We called every contact we received, and tabulated every duplicate contact, contacts no longer with the company, incorrect titles, incorrect gender, and contacts listed as being in the U.S. but actually located in another country.
In all, we found that 71% of the information was in some way incorrect.
The flip side is that 29% of the contacts were correct (725 contacts). But, that means if we'd exchanged 2,500 contacts one-for-one, we'd have only recieved 725 in return!
So, my recommendation is to consider a data-exchange with eyes wide open. If you're okay receiving some good titles and many wrong ones; if you're okay giving away your clients, friends of the firm, etc.; if you're okay risking legal liability, then this type of service is perfect for you.
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Sparkfly personalizes offers to influence shopper behavior and drive maximum margins
Published on July 14, 2010
One of the "if only we could" wishes of B2C Chief Marketing Offers is delivering highly personalized, one-to-one offers to customers - offers that result in increased brand loyalty and higher profit margins. I've come across a company that now delivers on that wish.
This is a way for your advertising agency to bring new technology and significant value to your current clients.
Here are some of the technological innovations now taking place in the sales promotion industry:
- Personalization is now possible in real-time - while customers are present in-store.
- Retailers are focused on customer loyalty and retention more than ever before.
- Personalization tools and processes are being integrated at the Point of Sale (POS).
- Post-promotion analysis can now be done in hours, not months.
Technologies that integrate real-time promotions into the POS deliver:
- Much better customer targeting
- Much higher redemption
- Tighter segmentation
- Greater market share
- Reduced traditional media spend
- Revenue gains
According to a white paper published by Retail TouchPoints,
The new paradigm makes possible a 1:1 relationship between seller and buyer that was inconceivable a few short years ago.
Besides new technology, what makes all this possible is that "the consumer is absolutely willing to sign up for personalized loyalty and rewards programs on the Web", says Sahir Anand of Aberdeen Group.
According to Retail TouchPoints, Sparkfly has "emerged as a leader in the transformation of existing POS systems, smarter CRM data integration, and a vastly improved consumer experience."
Sparkfly CEO Catherine Tabor adds this tantalizing summary of her company's solution:
Imagine a world where you know exactly which of your products an individual consumer is purchasing; when and where they're purchasing; and based on that behavioral purchase history, you can then communicate a very tailored and personalized offer to the individual consumer that will drive them back into the store, the restaurant, or to your product, at no incremental cost.
Without mentioning the Fortune 100 companies that Sparkly is now working with, after visiting the company's offices and seeing their clients' results, this may be a technology you want your clients to implement. It can and will benefit them, their customers, and further solidify your relationship.
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Look before you leap, and measure carefully
Published on July 07, 2010
It's really tempting for an ad agency new business person to look at inexpensive data sources (call them "Jigsaw-like") and get enticed by their low-price business models.
We get asked about services like this all the time, so I thought it might be helpful to provide a framework to review them.
Of utmost importance: Accuracy. These services usually claim an accuracy rate of around 75%. Taking this number at face value, they're admitting that 25% of the data is wrong.
Now, the reality of measuring accuracy. Unless these services are actually cleaning their data themselves, they really have no idea how clean it is. The questions to ask yourself are, "Am I okay knowing that one out of every four contacts I get is inaccurate?" And, "Am I okay wasting 25% of my time?"
When you're purchasing data from a service that relies on users to keep it clean, be cautious about data accuracy claims.
Why does this matter? When you think of accuracy, think of this formula: accuracy = time savings. The more accurate your data provider's information, the faster you'll reach your intended decision-makers. The less accurate it is, the more time you'll spend researching, trying to find your intended prospect.
With this in mind, here are some Pros and Cons of "Jigsaw-like" services:
Pros
- Wide variety of contacts
- Inexpensive
- Exchange out-of-date contacts with another
- No long-term contract
Cons
- No industry focus - you'll sort through lots of companies and titles to find good prospects
- Inaccuracy
- No research support
- Highly competitive - millions of people are going after the same people
- Value of your time - if you have a minimal amount of time to spend prospecting, how quickly you can get to decision-makers is critical
The best way to evaluate various data sources is to do some measurements. For example:
- Out of 100 contacts, how many are incorrect information? More than 10 incorrect data points and you're dealing with inaccurate information.
- How long does it take you to find the contact you're looking for? How does this compare to your current data provider?
- Once you have your desired contact, do you have the (correct) email, direct dial, address? If not (or it's incorrect), how long does it take you to get this information? Does your current information provider have it? Is it accurate?
- What's the value of your time? Calculate it as follows: (annual salary+bonus)x1.3 / 2080. This will show what it costs your agency to employ you, and takes into account taxes and benefits. If you apply this rate to the time it takes you to do what you've identified above, and extrapolate it annually, you'll have a true measurement of what your data really costs.
With this information in hand, you'll be able to decide whether a "Jigsaw-like" service is right for your agency.
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Recent Entries
What procurement does and why it exists - from the client's perspective
published on June 02, 2010
Many a new business person's blood pressure increases when you start talking about procurement. Frustration is natural when attempts to "persuade the unpersuadable" are unsuccessful - as in trying
Read on...
Aviod the pitfalls
published on May 27, 2010
My prior post details six building blocks to create an effective mentoring program to help build new business bench strength. As not every mentoring relationship is a good one, prior to
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Set it up right to begin with
published on May 25, 2010
One of the ways to develop new business bench strength is through a well set-up mentoring program. A protege can learn quickly from a mentor with broad and deep knoweldge of the ad agency. The
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Predicted to be a game-changer
published on March 09, 2010
The editor of Wired magazine, last week at the 4As Transformation 2010 conference, predicted that tablet computers will replace laptops. He also predicted a new era for the print publishing
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How hard are you willing to work, and for how long?
published on January 22, 2010
Most ad agency new business people are competitive, and want to be the very best they can be. What separates the average from the great? The experts from the "wannabes"? I was struck by a section
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Wonderfactory prototype is an exciting development
published on December 03, 2009
The Wonderfactory, in collaboration with Time, Inc., helped design the prototype of what Sports Illustrated magazine might look like on a tablet computer.
Revealed on December 2nd, this innovation
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Introducing Leap Media
published on November 19, 2009
Small and mid-size advertising agencies can now offer their clients Digital TV services. A low-cost, turn-key solution, which you can offer as your own, is available to drive new business.
Leap
Read on...
Good chemistry means learning how to have difficult conversations to maintain harmony
published on November 04, 2009
You've seen it happen: two members of your team aren't getting along. You've tried to repair the damage, but everyone knows it's there. While everyone tries to cover it up in the pitch, it still
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Don't manage your career, Exceed Expectations
published on October 14, 2009
Come year-end, we'll see ad agency new business people engage in the annual ritual of getting fired and finding new jobs at different firms.
This game of musical chairs creates turmoil within
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Signs of a turnaround
published on October 01, 2009
Dave Currie, President of Catapult New Business sits in a fairly unique seat. Catapult gets meetings with corporate marketers for its agency clients. While Dave speaks with dozens of agencies a
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published on September 04, 2009
What are the best questions to get corporate marketers talking?
We all have our favorites, so why not combine our knowledge and put together a list of the best? Below is a form to enter your
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You are judged on first impressions
published on August 27, 2009
A recent survey reveals that only one in three agency receptionists meet the characteristics of a Director of First Impressions. Staffed well and you'll have another new business weapon in your
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Listening = Winning
published on August 20, 2009
We've all heard the expression, "People love to hear themselves talk." When it comes to new business, your success is often determined by how well you get your prospects to do the talking.
I've
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One of the old rules may need to be rewritten
published on August 19, 2009
It wasn't long ago that calling a marketer on their cell phone was considered "too personal".
However, as cell phones are becoming mobile computers, and the lines between work-time and
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White paper reveals benefits of good prospect targeting
published on August 07, 2009
There's a direct correlation, in our data and in our experience, between companies who know more about their targets, and how successful they are at generating leads.
RainToday.com's research
Read on...
Best predictor of job performance is a work sample
published on August 05, 2009
Dan Heath and Chip Heath, authors of "Made to Stick" wrote a provocative article in the June issue of Fast Company. It challenges our basic premise about how to hire successful employees.They
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Input from entrepreneurs on management, marketing and sales
published on August 03, 2009
If your ad agency is new or entrepreneurial, you're in a start-up marketing services company, or you're a CEO, you'll relate to this list of 10 things MBA schools won't teach you and the
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How to you decompress and rejuvinate?
published on July 30, 2009
As you read this I'll have just gotten off a beautiful kayaking river in Idaho. We planned this trip a year ago. With us are members of my wife's family and very close friends with great senses
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Continuous improvement is a competitive advantage; here's a 3-step process to do so
published on July 13, 2009
Given the competitive nature of the ad agency and marketing services world, everyone involved in new business must continuously improve their processes and techniques in order to remain in the
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10 steps to win more new business from first meetings
published on July 09, 2009
Too often ad agency principals and new business people approach their first meeting with a prospect as an opportunity to "show up and throw up". I've seen it happen repeatedly over the last ten
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Role practice will dramatically improve your results
published on July 08, 2009
Listen to a gifted proactive new business person: their ability to engage a prospect on the phone and move the conversation forward will appear effortless. What you won't see are the hours and
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Use a CRM system for new business advantage
published on July 07, 2009
A sales guy from a well known payroll services company has been calling me on and off for months, trying to get me interested in their service, even though we're very satisfied with our current
Read on...
Recent survey reveals the stress associated with trying to take a vacation
published on June 24, 2009
With many agencies having trimmed staff, and the pressure to win new business extreme, it's hard to even think about taking time off. Yet, we all need to recharge our batteries and in stressful
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Tracking what you do is the best way to determine how to improve your prospecting
published on March 10, 2009
Here is a very simple call sheet, which you can reproduce on a single sheet of paper and use to track the effectiveness of your outbound prospecting efforts. Using this form let's you see at a
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Agencies can be good at new business without being an expert at every part of the process
published on January 29, 2009
Consider this rough list of the many pieces of an effective new business program:
- Clear understanding of your agency's strengths and weakness
- Account service managers who generate organic growth
Read on...
An accurate database is a key ingredient for new business success for any ad agency or marketing services company
published on January 13, 2009
These databases, or information resources, come in various shapes and sizes and you'll have the most success when you use them for their intended purpose.
Social sites - like LinkedIn or Facebook
Read on...
