I have been teaching the AE Bootcamp and Advanced AE Bootcamp for over a decade, and one of the things that always surprises me is how few AEs understand how to calculate advertising agency commission rates on media buys. When the rate calculation is incorrect, it can cost your agency a good chunk of the [...]
I don’t know about you, but I never feel quite caught up and haven’t learned how to catch up on work in full in a long time. Thanks to my high tech Post It Note strategy (every night I list the 3 things, and no more, I must get done the next day and put [...]
Three decades ago, every agency had a creative director role, often filled by someone best described as “eclectic.” What other personality type could possibly generate the big ideas that fulfilled clients’ needs? As a copywriter, I was paired with an art director. Together, we generated and executed concepts based on the creative director’s visions. How [...]
Agency owners are, for the most part, some of the bravest people I know. They have put everything on the line to start/own their agency and every day, they face and move past tough decisions. But if there’s an Achilles Heel for most owners, it’s the staffing issue, especially if your agency has hit a [...]
Our job as an agency is to provide value to our clients and help them woo and win their best potential customers. After all, marketing, according to Peter Drucker, is about understanding the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Value added marketing is one way to do exactly [...]
Technology has brought many changes to the workplace and one of the biggest has to be the ability and desire to work remotely. Many agencies swore they’d never allow an employee to work from home – be it down the street or across the country. That tune has changed for sure. Some agencies are making [...]
You have to tell a story — a great story — to get people to listen. You need to create a narrative that grabs and holds their attention. This isn’t easy, and there are many misguided attempts to master “storytelling” as a marketing tool, especially with how popular and buzzworthy this phrase has become of [...]
You have to tell a story — a great story — to get people to listen. You need to create a narrative that grabs and holds their attention. This isn’t easy, and there are many misguided attempts to master “storytelling” as a marketing tool, especially with how popular and buzzworthy this phrase has become of [...]
It’s no secret: Most advertising agency owners come from inside the advertising industry.Naturally, they’re very good account executives, copywriters or art directors, but they’re not always seasoned businesspeople. Like most creative people, they’re not interested in restrictive, formulaic systems and processes to guide workflow, even though they’re necessary. Unfortunately, this misstep can singlehandedly create chaos [...]
Small business owners often have little time to develop strategies to effectively monitor their company’s financial health. As a result, many of them know what their company needs to survive, like how much revenue they need to cover payroll, but not what they need to thrive. The difference between surviving and thriving often boils down to [...]
