Phil Johnson - Advice for the Small Marketing and Advertising Agency: Small Agency Diary

The Invisible Hand of Agency Culture

How to Pick the Winners

Posted by Phil Johnson on 11.20.09 @ 12:14 PM


Phil Johnson

A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post about the grand scheme of agency culture, but I still don't think I've answered my one big question: All things being equal, why does a talented person choose to work at one agency over another? Even more important, why do they stay? If you're a small or midsize agency, you've got to be able to answer this question if you want to create an environment that attracts great talent.

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6 comments

How You Can Redefine Your Agency in a Single Moment

Game-Changers Just Don't Fall Out of the Sky

Posted by Phil Johnson on 11.03.09 @ 10:45 AM


Phil Johnson

After winning the Volkswagen business, Mike Sheldon, co-CEO of Deutsch, Los Angeles, called it "a game-changer for the agency." Who doesn't want that? At some level, we're all looking for a transformative account, creative recognition, key acquisition or maybe a promotion to president.

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What's the ROI of Putting Your Pants on in the Morning?

The Dilemma of Measurement and Accountability

Posted by Phil Johnson on 10.20.09 @ 01:02 PM


Phil Johnson

A couple of months ago I had lunch with Scott Monty, a friend and former PJA manager, who is now director of social media at Ford. He was telling me a story about a speech he had recently given where someone in the audience kept challenging the ROI of social media. Scott is an analytical guy, but I guess he got exasperated and finally said, "What's the ROI of putting your pants on in the morning?" Some things just seem like a good idea, including program measurement and accountability. The dilemma I see is that while agencies have gotten religion about the discipline of measurement, these efforts have not necessarily increased the value of agency services.

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17 comments

Culture Shock: Defining Moments in an Agency's History

It's Not What Your Office Looks Like; It's What's Inside That Counts

Posted by Phil Johnson on 10.06.09 @ 11:27 AM


Phil Johnson

You couldn't ask for a better drama than the Zappos agency review. Among other things, it really underscored the importance of culture, for both agency and client. In the end, Zappos announced that Boston agency Mullen "clinched the deal because it simply understood the culture better than the other agencies." I'm cheering because Zappos chose a hometown team, and as much as I like to rag on big agencies, Mullen's culture and business strategy seemed to fall into perfect alignment with Zappos. All this news got me wondering about agency "culture" and what it really means. That word gets tossed around quite a bit and is probably misused just as often.

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Creating the Future of Adland

How Agencies Can Escape the Commodity Trap

Posted by Phil Johnson on 09.16.09 @ 05:37 PM


Phil Johnson

I used to really enjoy reading Mike Barnicle's column in the Boston Globe. He wrote a frequent feature called "I Was Just Thinking," where he would string together a series of random thoughts and observations that I always found pretty entertaining. My all-time favorite was: "I can only enjoy a hot dog when there's a baseball game in front of it." It turns out that Barnicle had borrowed the format from Mike Royko, a columnist for the Chicago Tribune, and there were other rumors of plagiarism. None of this bothered me because advertising people thrive on the creative adaptation of ideas swirling around in the wide-open spaces of popular culture.

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29 comments

From the Mouths of Babes: What the Interns Think

Surprising Thoughts on Advertising, Business and Social Media

Posted by Phil Johnson on 08.27.09 @ 08:31 AM


Phil Johnson

Watching the summer interns grow younger every year is a humbling experience. I had a particularly poignant moment a few weeks ago. A bunch of us were hanging out in the kitchen, and I offered an intern one of the candies that I was eating. She lit up and said, "My grampy really likes these." I haven't felt that young since I dusted off my original Woodstock album.

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19 comments

Steal These Ideas

Launching Our 2010 Agency Business Plan

Posted by Phil Johnson on 08.03.09 @ 01:09 PM

Phil Johnson

I once worked for a creative director who told me that ideas were cheap. He didn't say that they weren't valuable. He meant that you didn't have to worry about people stealing your ideas because without a vision for implementation they were worthless to anyone else. In that spirit, I'm going to share PJA's early-stage agency strategy for 2010. It's going to be hard enough for us to pull it off, so I'm not worried about anyone else running off with our thinking.

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2 comments

You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly

The Love-Hate Relationship Between Agencies and Purchasing Departments

Posted by Phil Johnson on 07.14.09 @ 11:24 AM

Phil Johnson

Last week Jennifer Modarelli wrote an insightful and entertaining post for this blog in which she described with wonderful accuracy what the RFP process, when run by the purchasing department, feels like for an agency. There couldn't have been an agency manager who didn't cringe with recognition at the experience. Don't skip the comments, where agencies and a few clients face off against each other. Reading them gave me flashbacks to some of my own disheartening interactions with purchasing departments, and for a moment I considered getting treatment for post-traumatic stress syndrome. It's demeaning to think that the creative soul of your agency will be turned into a line item, forced into an ultimate fighting match with other line items on a spreadsheet.

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10 comments

Tweeting Your Way to New Prospects

Tackling New Business Development in a Social Media World

Posted by Phil Johnson on 07.06.09 @ 06:00 AM

Phil Johnson

I remember the first direct-marketing piece PJA produced more than 15 years ago. It was a single-fold card on coated stock, black type on a red background, with a quote from Mark Twain:

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16 comments

Economic Recovery Is Coming; Are You Ready?

Might Come Later Rather Than Sooner, but You Should Have a Plan

Posted by Phil Johnson on 06.18.09 @ 10:13 AM

Phil Johnson

Although I still lie to my children about my age -- I like to keep it in the 38 to 42 range -- I'll admit that I can remember three major downturns during my career. Each hit most agencies like one of those thunderstorms where everyone makes a mad dash for shelter. Agencies ultimately adapt and develop new business models and positions, but not before embracing more cautious versions of themselves rarely seen in good times. Pretty soon that caution becomes a reality that everybody accepts. What we forget is that there's a flip side to a bad economy. This may be counterintuitive, but just as you must retool your business during a recession, you need to plan for an economic recovery. I think it's time to start planning.

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