The Advertising They Deserve

We get a lot of "Request for Proposal" (RFP) at the agency.

It’s the first stage of how a prospective client begins a search for a new advertising agency. They will send out a RFP to a group of agencies that they think might be a good fit with them. When the response comes in, the client will review and select several of the agencies for a meeting. Sometimes that will lead to a hire and sometimes it leads to a full agency pitch between one or two other agencies.
What a lot of potential clients may not realize is that a good advertising agency is looking at them, just as hard as they are looking at the agency! As much as a company wants a good advertising agency, a good advertising agency wants a good client.
We recently received a RFP from a company that had an unusual request in it.

Describe your ideal client and working relationship

Now you might think that this is a very common request in a RFP, but I cannot remember the last time that I have seen a request like this and it leads me to believe that this company might be a very good client. I thought I’d share our response with you --

There is a famous saying by David Ogilvy about the advertising business,

“Clients get the advertising they deserve.”

Your first impression when reading Mr. Ogilvy’s quote might be to take it as a negative comment. But let’s assume it was never meant that way and put a positive spin on it.

“Great Clients get great advertising”

When you’re a great client, everybody in the agency wants to work on your account. Creative staff put in extra hours to deliver their best work for you. Account Executives find excuses to be at your place of business. HR hints to a hot new talent they are trying to recruit that they “might” get to work on your account and Project Managers send you emails with little smiley faces at the end.

Do you want to be a great client? Just wanting to means you probably already are, but I’ll give you some inside tips that can make you even better and you’ll see the results right away.

Be the cheerleader
Your positive attitude is contagious! Great clients know that their agency will come up with the “big idea” and you’re there to help them in any way you can. One great client sent 20 pizzas to the agency with a thank you card after a successful launch. We’d take a bullet for a client like that.

Share your ideas
Let’s be honest, every idea is not a good one, but like President Reagan loved to say, “There’s got to be a pony somewhere in this manure heap.” Great clients join with the creative team and we all share in the success.

Be realistic with your schedules
If we go for it, we go for it together. Great clients make sure that their agency has everything they need to get the job done. They return phone calls and emails and if, God forbid, we miss the date by a day, thank the team for trying and for the great work.

Be open with information
We are at our best as an agency when we’re working as an extension of your marketing team. The only way for this to happen is when we know as much about your business as possible. So share as much as you can – your goals, plans, priorities, and hurdles – and invite us to your company picnic! The more your agency knows, the more they can contribute to your success.

Great clients get great advertising

Jon

Fishing Where the Fish Are

I used to fish in a lot of Bass tournaments.

It was a lot of fun, flying across the lake in my 20 ft bass boat, pushed along by a 200 Horse, fuel injected Merc engine. But I never caught a lot of fish because I could never figure out where the fish were! I read in a fishing magazine that 80% of the fish were in 20% of the lake. The problem was that they were very big lakes.

Advertising has the same challenge. 80% of your customers are in 20% of the country, or marketing channels, or media.

I once gave a presentation before an audience of around 1000 marketers and I asked if anyone in the audience had a $100 million or more ad budget to work with, no hands were raised. “What about $50 million,” I asked, and two people raised their hands. I didn’t see more than ten hands go up until I dropped below $10 million and the vast majority of hands rose when I hit $3 million or less.

When you have a limited budget, and I’ll make a safe bet and say, ‘That means you.” you cannot afford to waste one dollar on advertising to people that will never buy your product or service. You must fish where the fish are.

Now I may not be a very good fisherman, but I’m a pretty good marketer and I’m going to tell you how to find out where your prospects are.

A best customer profile
You start by clearly identifying the characteristics of your best customer, we call this a “Best Customer Profile” (BCP). How old are they? Gender? Where do they live? How much education? Do they have children? How old? Pets? Hobbies? Income? Etc.
The same technique is used if you’re a business marketer. Look at your business customers and identify your BCP.

You then start looking for prospects that match your BCP. In our agency we have mapping software that allows you to overlay all of the different best customer values and
you begin to see the areas where your prospects are that match up with your BCP. We call these areas “Opportunity Zones”. They are where you want to focus your limited marketing budget to get the most bang for your buck.

Here’s an example of how this technique worked very successfully for a client.
In 1997 we launched PetFoodDirect.com (PFD), a dot.com start-up that sold pet products. PFD had a marketing budget of around $5 million.

At the same time Pets.com launched a competitive operation with a marketing budget of over $100 million. Pets.com hired a big, broad market advertising agency and started spending money like a drunken sailor on a Saturday night. They created the Sock Puppet mascot and ran TV spots all over the country, including Super Bowl ads.

We did our homework.
23% of all the pet owning households in the USA, with a household income of $50,000 or higher, and a wife and two kids are located down the I-95 corridor between Connecticut and Carolina. And guess what? 80% of all pet product purchases are made by females. We knew what our Best Buyer Profile was and we knew where our best prospects were.

We targeted 100% of our marketing efforts on those pet owning women who lived in that small part of the country and had the money to pay for the product.

Long story made short, PetFoodDirect.com today is the largest, web-only pet product site in the country. Pets.com went bankrupt after a few years and the last I heard, the Sock Puppet was shilling loans out of an alley in Las Vegas.

Fish where the fish are.

Jon