Creative Agency Secrets

Doing ongoing research into less well-known places where agencies can go for help finding leads for new business pitches

Creative Brief - £300 bare minimum and £2,500 for the 2 Case Study package up to £4,500 for 10 case studies …. and when I searched on copywriters in London and South East there were none listed!  [but over 30 for the UK listed and so some work needed on sub-categorisation, IMO]

Skillfair - free to clients to advertise briefs and £200 for everyone else …. I have used this twice to post projects and got great responses and placed one job with an agency that applied.  A good service with excellent customer service back-up.

Agency Finder -a 'new' service.  Well it's Reardon Smith Whittaker getting the license to be the European arm of an already-successful US business.  Pay £295 per year and then up this to £3,000 p.a. if you accept the offer to go to a pitch… whether you win or lose.  One of my clients is testing it right now.  Will let you know if they turn up anything useful.

I have had three potential new customers approach me recently asking to work with me "for free" in order to try out what it may be like.

I am in two minds about this.  One of the difficulties about being freelance and working as an external consultant is that personalities matter and your customers generally like working with people they like.  Until they work with you they don’t know your style, the detail of your techniques or whether they like you.  [One of the difficulties is that what I do is not unique…. the base service is provided by many people-like-me but my expertise and experience is what delivers the unique service to my clients.  It’s hard to persuade everyone that this is the case and that it supplies them with better outcomes.]

And so to the freebies.  To do or not to do? 

I don’t have an answer.  To date I have said yes to two of the enquiries.  I facilitated a session for a City Law Firm and now have been asked by a listed PLC PR firm to give an hours talk to their business development teams. 
If I’m honest, both sessions have grated a bit.  But what do you do?  It is all about confidence. 

when you are building up your profile, sometimes you have to give a bit free (or just for expenses) in order to gain an audience.  But, once you are well known or more confident, a fee is entirely appropriate.

I have sliding scales of fees with different charges for large and small organisations and contra-deals for those who can offer me something in return that I value.  It’s worked well to date.

But back to the question.  Are they being cheeky?  Is this me being ignorant and taken advantage of?

P.S.  One has offered me a full list of internal department contacts who might buy my services with the understanding that I can pitch them afterwards.  This might be a useful contra that I can take up.

Always welcome…

Graham Rittener - In House Network
Philip O’Malley - In House Network
Mick Rigby - Monkey Communications
Kristel McGuire - Leapfrog Research

Tony Chant - Eurocom Healthcare

Eliza Flynn, Wunderman
Alex Goldberg, Ogilvy Healthworld
Josephine Seccombe, Emmaus House
James Gurling, Hanover
Rebecca Crook, CCHM:Ping
Jon Howard, Quietstorm
Alnoor Ladha, JWT
Mark Hancock, Proximity
Nicky Place, Build
Alex Frith, Threepipe

Clive Howard and Jeremy Baines, Howard Baines

Just had replies from:

Lloyd Davies - Perfect Path

Marcel Cowan and Darren Shea - Cowan Group
Gary Jacobs - Fox Kalomaski

Hannah Locke - Burst Interactive / MyKindaPlace

Charlie Robertson - Red Spider

Andrew Roberts - Gravity

Gareth Thomas - BPL

Looking forward to it!

Thanks to everyone who’s replied so far.
There is a posting on Ecademy from Vladimir Dimitroff - cheers, Mate!

Attendees:
Nick Fenner - Shoosmiths

Dominic Shales - Paratus Communications
James Hamilton - British Titanium
Kimikawa de Castro - K4 Innovations
Madelaine Cooper - Heroes
Robin Dhara - Gabrielle Shaw Communications

Will get an update from Mark later on.

I recently met the InHouse team and they told me that they’d secured an interview with my old boss, Don Peppers for their InHouse Village site.

Well, Don is a key man in my life for having jumped onto cluetrain very early and added the dimension that explained the future of direct marketing was integrated…. and that it needed to be supported by a new principle treat different customers differently.
His methodology for CRM was 4-steps: Identify your customers, Differentiate them by value and need; Interact with them and learn; and Customise your offering to their needs.

in his interview (published in short chapters…. two are up right now), he has developed his theme somewhat.

Key quotes

You can’t un-Google yourself
If your dialogues with customers don’t result in spontaneous replies from the customers - they are not authentic [he fails to add that this is PR not dialogue and that you might examine whether your offering is hitting the ’spot’ with customer needs
The key brand trait today is TRUST.  A company should always act in the interest of its customers and not just in pursuit of profit. [nicely put - and a key part of WOM online]
When considering which brands your agency wants to work with, think carefully how many brands actually do hire an agency to work on their marketing.  Most don’t.  Target your approach.
When he was doing biz dev - Don kept a ring binder with one page of notes for each target brand he wanted to work with.  [A great low-tech means of keeping data to hand, up to date and focused.]

So far in the interview, it seems Don is just saying the same stuff about 1to1 marketing but realising that today’s digital world actually enables a lot of his past-10-years-theorising.  That’s fine.  What I want to know is what are leading companies actually DOING?  Now?

Mark McGuinness and I are hosting a breakfast event on November 22nd in central London.

It may be of interest to anyone who has to go and win new business for their agency.  Here’s the detail.

These days winning a pitch is harder than ever – more agencies, longer ‘short’ lists, time delays. You need every advantage to ensure your pitch gets the best possible chance of succeeding.

One of the factors that may contribute to success is an awareness of the personalities on the client team – so that you can play your presentation to appeal to their comfort zones and core instincts. Your pitch can also be more effective if it appeals to the values at the heart of the client’s company and brand.

Come and hear respected Business Coach Mark McGuinness, in conversation with Rebecca Caroe, talking about the Enneagram system of personality types and core values – and how this can help your team win more pitches.

Breakfast on 22nd November will be at Piccolino, Heddon Street, London W1B 4BG Arrive from 7.45 and we’ll start promptly at 8 am and be finished by 9 with networking until 9.45.

Hosted by Rebecca Caroe, the event will be a conversation during which the issues of successful business development and personality typing will be discussed – followed by your questions. To register e-mail  And we’ll send you all the info, plus Mark’s e-book An Introduction to the Enneagram to thank you for your interest.

If you can’t come but would like a free copy of Mark’s e-book please e-mail us and ask for a copy.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to any agency friends or colleagues who may be interested.

Download enneagramflyer.pdf

[the event invitation]

Mark McGuinness works with agencies to get the best out of their people. Mark is a poet and a business coach specialising in the creative industries. He is a qualified psychotherapist and holds an MA in Creative & Media Enterprises from the University of Warwick. His areas of expertise include creativity and managing and developing creative teams. He uses the Enneagram to help clients with a range business issues.
Mark’s coaching blog

Reading about another marketer’s top tips on how to provoke a response from a prospect from your first contact (also called Cold Calling).

I have generally foudn this to be really helpful in my own business development work.  I am one of hte (probably sad) people who enjoys making cold calls.  One of the reasons I like it is that I am reasonably successful. 

My cold approaches may be by phone or email or letter.  But what makes them distinctive is that I always follow up and my messaging is designed to be short and very memorable.  And occasionally cheeky(!)

• Plan the method of your approach what step follows
• Write all the collateral and script guides
• Work out a clear record keeping system (database, spreadsheet, paper trail)
• Be diligent and persistent

I will post up some of my cold letters for you to have a look at.

These are things I enjoy and so do well.  I’ve done most of them many times and can give you references, if you need.

In no particular order….

1 - Mentoring and coaching anyone with business development responsibility or who has to collaborate with biz dev to do their job better and get results

2 - Moving the whole company to an Enterprise 2.0 operation.  This is a more open relationship with its customers and prospects though using web 2.0 techniques (for yourselves not clients) and creating the open culture internally that enables outsiders to recognise the ‘personality’ of the agency - bypassing traditional outbound communication methods

3 - Facilitating an away day for a client or your senior team

4 - Improving your new business methods and, particularly, pitching

5 - Running a training session on "New business for non-new biz people"