• How to Fail: A Pitch

    September 15th, 2010 / Comments (0)

    (Originally published by The Atlanta Egotist)

    If you want to fail a pitch, show up late. There is nothing that says "we want your business" more than being on time. If there is a hard stop, plan your arrival time accordingly. Seventeen minutes prior should be plenty of time. Glad-handing and introductions will take up approximately 12 minutes, leaving ample time to review the 75-slide capabilities presentation you custom prepared for the day in the remaining 5 minutes.

    Send your least senior employees to the meeting. Interns are best because they are generally very timid and cower, stutter and faint when asked pointed questions such as "how are you?" or "did you have a hard time finding our office?" This can be amusing and breathe life into even the dreariest of pitches. If no interns are available at the time, freelancers are second best. Since they have no real allegiance to your agency, are likely angry they haven't been hired on full time and probably would prefer to take the project on themselves, you are pretty much guaranteed not to win the project when you send in a freelancer.

    Always come unprepared to a pitch you want to fail. It is important to be as unfamiliar with your prospect's business as possible. The more obscure the topic the better. It can be difficult to feign a misunderstanding of cotton balls, but no one understands futures trading, for example. In a pitch to a futures trading firm when you asked if you have any experience in their industry, relax. Respond with something along the lines of, "yes, we have a ton of experience in futures trading. Just the other day I was telling our Creative Director about how I thought Facebook was the future of television and he told me that he thought MySpace was the future of television. See, we trade futures around the office all the time."

    It can sometimes be difficult to fail a pitch if a prospect is already familiar with your work and impressed by your portfolio. Overcome any interest they have by displaying specific examples of work you hate. It is not a requirement that this work even be your own. Pull up some competitor's website and grab some of their particularly mediocre work, slap it in a PowerPoint, set up some nice slide transitions (we recommend 'dissolve'), turn down the lights and put on a good show.

    There are a few subtle things you can do to fail a pitch. Forgetting peoples names, or calling them by their reality/porn/Japanime star doppelganger's name can be effective. Coming in still drunk from the night before is fine too. Remark about how glad you are to narrowly pass the field sobriety test on your way over. Swapping DUI stories can be a great ice breaker. Dress casually. Come straight from the gym if you want. Chew gum. Smell like cigarettes. Swear often and unnecessarily.

    At the end of the pitch you should be at your car before they can say "next steps." Practice packing up your bag in advance, a time of 10 seconds or less is acceptable. Never unpacking your bag is preferred. Prior experience on a pit crew would be helpful here.

    After the pitch, don't bother following up. Maybe you'll receive a polite e-mail from an administrative assistant a few months later explaining that they're sorry for the delayed response and while they appreciate all your effort and recognize your stellar work, they've decided to go another direction. Maybe you won't hear anything. You'll completely forget about the pitch until one day you'll read on The Egotist that they hired that competitor, the one with the mediocre work. You'll run into one of the marketing coordinators at a networking event the following year entitled, "Facebook, The New Television" and you'll smile to yourself knowing that you and your Creative Director did trade futures that day.

    (Originally published by The Atlanta Egotist)

  • Writing ads for TV is still all about strategy

    September 9th, 2010 / Comments (1)

    (by Darren Easton, VP & Creative Director, The Cyphers Agency)

    I say all the time that creating a print ad is so much harder than creating a TV spot. In print, you have 1.2 seconds to nail your point before a page is turned or passed by. With TV, you get 30 seconds. That’s a lifetime to sell something. What is difficult in writing for TV is the temptation to let the bells and whistles of today’s technology take the lead – let the tail wag the dog.

    If technology furthers the strategy, use it. But strategy is where the TV commercial begins. Which leads me to the other difficulty in writing for TV. All our lives we’ve learned to tell stories using words. Now you need to tell them with images, with words merely supporting them. So how do we use visuals in strategy to begin?

    The big idea. What’s the main message that persuades and makes the product stand out? This is marketing 101. Determining a product’s USP.

    The benefit. What is the benefit of the big idea and whom does it benefit? You have your product’s USP determined and you now need to think about how your target audience will want to hear it and what they’ll be interested in seeing.

    Create visual elements that stick. Here’s where the personality of the brand shines bright. If the tone of your brand is rugged, dramatize that toughness with like imagery, typography, movement and sound.

    Now you take that visual and tone to script. This is what we call a “treatment.” Use a narrative to tell the story. Much like a Cliff’s Notes version or the basic plot line of what happens. e.g. “Guy walks into a bar, gal comes over and says…” Once you’re happy with the scenario, put it in script form. Once you’re finally happy with your script, you’re off to storyboards. Now you can put technology to work for your script. The dog is now wagging the tail and strategy has not been sacrificed for the sake of cool effects.

    Darren Easton is a creative with 20+ years in the ad business.

    (originally published here)

  • The Dubai Egotist

    September 4th, 2010 / Comments (0)

    (An editorial by Felix Unger originally published in The Denver Egotist)

    What?

    Yeah, I know. In the past I’ve gone off on rants that dropped the f-bomb more times than napalm was dropped on Vietnam. But unlike war, advertising is not really a matter of life or death. And although my rants always serve a purpose, which is to help you improve the work you do, it’s important to remember that it’s just work.

    As my idol (well, one of them) Luke Sullivan said recently:

    “Dude, this is advertising. You’re not pullin’ babies out of burning buildings. You’re not curing cancer or making peace. You make commercials for cry-eye. Websites. End-aisle displays. Jesus.”

    Maybe the combination of Mr. Sullivan spouting those words has, along with the seemingly invincible Alex Bogusky quitting CP+B, planted a seed in my noggin that has started to grow. Maybe I’m just getting soft in my old age. But advertising is not exactly a noble profession is it? In fact, in the 80s it was up there with stockbroker and plastic surgeon as an industry full of overpaid, arrogant assholes. These days, the overpaid has been replaced by overworked, but the arrogant assholes are never in short supply. I should know, I’ve been one for many years.

    But why bring this up? Especially after spending a few years shouting at you all and generally being a surly old bastard.

    Well, it all comes down to quality of life and your own sanity. I think we all have projects that we know are more important than others. We have those big jobs that not only make money for our clients, but also give us the recognition we deserve. In the grand scheme of things, though, they’re just ads. Creative ads, maybe, but they’re still ads that are ultimately a distraction from daily life.

    Some people say that ads are a break from that routine, like the Superbowl spots. Well, those spots aren’t even ads to be honest. They’re more like entertainment with a logo stamped at the end. And even then, so what? They give you a chuckle, you say “nice way to spend $3 million” and a week after that they’re a distant memory. They go in your book, of course, so that you can get a better job and do more ads that people will forget (cue Elton John singing Circle Of Life).

    Occasionally, advertising can be for a good cause. You get to work on a charity, or promote health and well-being. On those days, hell, you really are doing work that can save lives. But those jobs are few and far between. Ads for telecoms, financial institutions and junk food are far more prevalent.

    I remember once working all weekend on a project that was deemed “of utmost importance and urgency” by the client. We slept at the agency. We ate cruddy food. We drank beer and coffee in equal amounts. We cracked the job and presented it at 9am on Monday morning. The client LOVED it. Oh yes, we were golden.

    But when we saw that mighty newspaper insert covering the streets of the city the following week, we were less than ecstatic. That highly important job we sweated bullets over was just tomorrow’s garbage. Maybe 1% of the people who saw it actually read it. And maybe 2% of those gave enough of a crap to call the number. But how many trees died to get that wonderfully creative but ultimately innocuous ad onto the streets, lining the cardboard boxes of the homeless?

    I think we often confuse passion and a commitment to excellence with something far less dignified. And that is obsession.

    We get stuck in a box, void of all perspective, and believe that what we’re working on is vitally important. It warrants shouting matches, 19-hour workdays and a social life as anorexic as an Olsen twin. It often leads to stress, alcohol abuse, drug addition (prescription or illegal), ulcers, heart attacks, therapy sessions, divorces, affairs and sleepless nights that turn into sleepless months. It can even cause death. No, it’s not an exaggeration, ad people over the years have died due to some of those reason listed above, suicide and who knows what else.

    And for what? A 48ft billboard that sells a whole bunch of vodka? A TV ad that shifts more under-arm deodorant? A radio spot that gets people to pick up the phone and call Geico? Even if it’s an uber-cool spot like Apple’s 1984 or the Guinness Surfers, it’s just something designed to sell computers and booze.

    The Denver Egotist is on a mission to help Denver suck less. But that is a philosophy that applies to more than the work. It applies to everything that touches your life in this business. And how much does it suck to have a job that makes you ill, keeps you at the office for days on end, and stops you from seeing the people you love?

    I am by no means saying that the work you do doesn’t matter. Of course it does. And I’m not asking you to ignore my previous posts that talk about being a good CD, the importance of a great creative brief, or how to sell great work to clients. This is still just as relevant. We should all strive to make the work we do better, for our clients and ourselves. But do it with some perspective, if you haven’t been doing so already.

    Think about this the next time you’re in a screaming match arguing over the point size of a headline, or have reduced some newbie account coordinator to tears because she dared to say yes to an idiotic client request. Work matters, but not at the cost of your sanity or your soul.

    Felix Unger is a site contributor, ranter and curmudgeon for The Denver Egotist. He's been in the ad game a long time, but he's still young enough to know he doesn't know everything. He'll give his opinion, you can take it or leave it. If he uses the f-bomb from time-to-time, forgive him. Sometimes, when you're ranting, no other word will do. In his spare time, he does not torture small animals. He has been known, on occasion, to drink alcohol by the gallon. Do as he says, not as he does.

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