2Bobs

Given the data from recent research about Chief Marketing Officers, David has four things creative agencies should keep in mind during sales and work interactions with them.

Blair has been thinking about how, as AI continues to streamline more administrative tasks over time, we will be left to focus on the things we humans are good at – interacting with other humans. Because of this, the interesting people will win in selling their services and expertise.

We all know how valuable external input from trusted advisors can be for our business. But what does that look like for independent agencies who don’t have investors to answer to?

Categorizing AI-generated copy as “human vs AI” is not as binary as with AI-generated images or video. So Blair has developed an AI Contribution Scale to help us all be more transparent when using LLMs in the creation of written communication intended for prospects, clients, and peers.

In a recent article, David discloses the questions all creative agency principals need to answer whenever they are ready to find the right buyer and successfully navigate the merger and acquisition (M&A) process to complete the sale.

Blair and David are hearing all kinds of people talking about how their positioning needs adjustment because of AI. Blair does see an issue developing for many creative firms, but more with business strategy instead of positioning.

David recommends regular in-person company-wide gatherings for remote workers as an opportunity for creative agencies to help build their organization’s culture in our post-pandemic economy where online video meetings continue to fill our calendars and working from home is the new norm.

Blair changes his mind on productized services. Again. And AI is the reason.

David shares a quick list of website elements he sees is missing from a lot of creative firms’ websites which could help them attract more new business.

Blair shares what stuck in his mind about marketing success from listening to a recent podcast interview with Rory Sutherland on Liam Curley’s Undisputed Authority.

Which segments of our field will thrive in the near future and which ones will slowly lose relevance, and why? David wants creative entrepreneurs to continue being resilient and reinventing themselves every two years while keeping a watchful eye on constantly evolving industry practices and technologies (including AI).

Blair sees creative entrepreneurs opening themselves up to pricing resentment from their clients when the value of their contributions diminishes over time, especially when they've created significant economic value at the beginning of a long-term engagement.

Prompted by a recent trip to Europe, David considers how the differences between worker protection laws in Europe compared to North America affect starting and running an agency in this fast-changing global economy.

Blair identifies three recurring categories of lost sales in creative firms and offers solutions to each. Fixing two of these patterns can reap the dividends immediately, and adjusting your sales approach for all three will pay off for years.

David sees a lot of creative agencies making bad assumptions about their client relationships by not making the distinction between the reasons why clients come to them in the first place, why they choose to continue working with them as time passes, and then why they ultimately move on.

Blair is stunned that he still encounters so many advisory businesses like ad agencies, consulting firms, legal and accounting practices — large and small — that are still selling time. So he and David discuss what new revenue models should look like as we all adapt to how AI is changing our businesses.

Blair interviews David about a recent article he’s been receiving a lot of feedback on, in which he lists all of the things he would try to incorporate into a brand new creative agency, based on what he’s seen and learned from working with thousands of firms over the years.

Blair differentiates between decoy pricing and price anchoring, which are two different techniques that are often confused for each other, and can increase your average proposal value in multi-option pricing when used appropriately.

Despite the fact that many entrepreneurs hate people telling them what to do, they end up running their own agencies using a “central planning” model. Instead, David encourages entrepreneurial leaders to set clear standards, give staff more freedom, and institute kind accountability, for them and ourselves.

David interviews Blair about his recent article in which he gives us methods to cope with our own natural emotional and physiological responses that can be triggered when unforeseen events unfold within sales conversations.

Blair interviews David about a recent article in which he argues that the very traits that make entrepreneurs successful also make it hard for them to give up being their own boss and join someone else’s company.

David interviews Blair about his recent article in which he explores how our businesses are not simple machines that can be tuned (or killed) with specific wrenches, but they are complex adaptive organisms that we need to understand differently.

David sees too many marketing agencies trying to attract new business by staking claims of specialness on things for which nobody is claiming the opposite, instead of building their positioning on uniquely defined expertise.

Are prospects not responding to your follow-up after you submit a proposal? Blair goes through what might be causing their lack of response and then provides three tools to address the ghosting problem.

One characteristic of our industry is disappearing moats. After a brief overview of the fourteen moats we've lost from 1965 to today, we'll look at what turf we really have left to defend and what the future will look like if we get this right. It'll be very different, and you'd better get ahead of it.