I’m been on the agency side for most of my life, and have been part of many successful pitch teams in my day -- as well in some disastrous ones for sure. But recently I was on the other side of the table, being pitched to by agencies in the US and UK.

We asked the agencies for the usual credentials, relevant experience etc., and we provided them with two scenarios on which we wanted to get their ideas in order to gauge their creativity and approach.

Several things struck me about agency pitches. First, don’t be a dumb ass. I’m not being sarcastic here, just real. It’s incredible how many small stupid mistakes agencies can make that ruin their chances of getting the business. Here are some of my notes from the meetings.

Do some basic research. There is no excuse in today’s world, especially when you can Google anything in seconds. That’s plain laziness.
• One guy’s big idea was that I should start a blog…seriously
• One agency clearly did not even know what businesses we are in
• Several made a bunch of suggestions about stuff we were already doing
• One agency clearly did not even know what businesses we are in

Be prepared. Read the RFP for the love of god. Seriously a couple of folks clearly did not do that.
• Some agencies were clearly not prepared to answer the questions that were written in black and white in the RFP
• One agency sent just one sales guy to “get briefed on what you want” and was clearly not ready to present to us.

The team makes all the difference. Frankly I was surprised how similar everyone’s capabilities content was. Everyone says the same thing about why they are great, and I can’t recall whose presentations was whose. What I did remember was the people and their ideas. Would I want to work with them?
• Some were smart , but arrogant
• Some were not so smart, but personable
• And a couple were both smart and personable (who do you think won?)

Mind the visuals. I hate to say it, but we are superficial – great content in a cheesy PowerPoint deck says less, and doesn’t work as hard as decent content in a wonderfully designed presentation. I actually remember the nice business cards from the lame ones, the binder clips from the nicely covered leave behinds

At the end of the day a pitch is like a job interview. The resume means little once you are in the room. The magic is connecting with the folks who will ultimately hire you on a personal level

It’s getting rough out there for clients looking for interactive agencies. No one is talking about it but size is starting to matter a lot in agency decisions. Within 18 months I predict the holding companies will begin consolidating their small shops to at least to create the illusion of scale.

Why?

-- Clients want big; they don’t want to manage multiple interactive shops on top of already managing traditional advertising agencies, PR firms and specialty players.

-- The war for interactive talent is fierce. Smaller shops don't have the right "farm system" to train young talent or the management infrastructure, methodologies, and systems to drive quality delivery. Great creatives want to work in firms where they can do just that – and not have to wear multiple hats.

-- Smaller shops can’t handle the volumes. A few years ago we stumbled into an account that required hundreds of rich media assets per week just to "feed the media" - about two to three billion impressions per month. The company, Citi, had used many of the "major" shops, but none of them could keep up with sheer volume of work without making stupid mistakes.

As more money continues to shift from the analog to digital there are more and more massive accounts popping up with no real large interactive agency players to handle them.
Consider the drop-off in head count from the top three -- AvenueA/Razorfish, Sapient, Digitas, each with a few thousand folks – to the next tier where interactive agencies have a few hundred people. More than half of the top 100 interactive agencies have less than 100 people on staff.

So while creativity and insights are still high on client's criteria, size is starting to matter more than ever.

BTW Citi is still a great client.

Like many others, I have been a walking commercial for the shiny little widget for the past week or so. My now well rehearsed response to the question “So how is it?” in case you are interested is; I love it, great phone, the user experience is amazing, the keyboard is lame but better than I expected, even got my corporate email working, but my biggest surprise has been browsing the internet. I don’t care what anyone says the experience of browsing the web on your phone or PDA today sucks. I don’t care if its WAP, Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc. it’s useless and frustrating. Most sites don’t offer a mobile version, and if they do the experience is awful. But now with my iPhone in hand it’s a whole new world. Today I went out and about town running some errands with my son, I had promised him we would see the Transformers movie, but I found myself on the other side of town. Enter my iPhone. I went to Fandango.com (which we recently helped launch) and looked up the closest theatre and movie times, bought the tickets, and got directions from Google Maps. Yeah I know this does not sound like its so advanced. Couldn't you do that on your BlackJack? Sure I could have pulled this off on my old phone with ninja like finger moves, and a hell of a lot of patience. On the iPhone it was just sitting in front of my Mac (yes Mac) at home. Takes my half a second to check on the Sapient stock price (SAPE) which I do a dozen times a day on Yahoo Finance. I’ve tried on my phone before, but gave up. Yahoo can expect less traffic from me. Fandango will definitely get more. My advice is to dust off those mobile business plans, because this time it will stick.

In a recent interview with a potential Creative Director in Miami, the guy made a statement that at first took me by surprise and still has me thinking. He said that “personalization was counterproductive to building a brand”, he claimed “how could you possibly build a consistent brand experience if it changes for everyone”. My instinct was to disagree, but frankly I could not muster a flawless rebuttal. I’m very interested to hear what you (the reader) have to say. Go ahead don’t be scared post something! After a couple of days, the Monday morning quarterback in me came up with a response. Actually an example of where personalization has supported and driven a brand. We did some work for Celebrity Cruises the premium brand in the Royal Caribbean family. The brand promise revolved around “being treated famously”. We leveraged technology to deliver an unparalleled level of personalization into the online experience. The idea was to mimic the kind of personal attention you would receive onboard. The results were impressive we not only dramatically increased revenue, when we surveyed their customers they were impressed with their entire experience. I would argue that builds their brand.

Everyone of you at one point has heard the saying “the data never lies” or “the truth lies in the numbers” these so called truisms sound logical therefore they must be true. Right?

In the book Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt (a great read BTW) the author surfaces a myriad of examples of how data (when misinterpreted) has driven individuals, societies, companies, and even governments into doing some really stupid things. In some cases these misinterpretations of data have made for some very wasteful, harmful or even tragic results. Can anyone say “weapons of mass destruction”?

Just yesterday I got my hands on a beautiful report consisting of 136 glossy pages, chuck full of beautiful graphs and charts. Some very impressive folks with some very impressive degrees delivered this report at the request of my client. Only problem with the content was their conclusions were 100% wrong.

Fortunately my client has grown to become a very savvy online marketer and he picked up on the flaws in the report immediately. This guy is frankly much smarter than most, so it got me thinking that in the hands of just about anyone else this report could be very dangerous. After reading it most marketers would set people and programs in motion to take advantage of it’s recommendations. Effectively rather than improve their business, they would likely paralyze it’s growth.

Given the complexity of this space, I suspect this happens quite often. The new hot shot with the fancy excel spreadsheet comes in touting the insight of the day, and you mobilize the troops. Let’s put this offer up, or take this banner down, or worse let’s change the price point.

You may be making a big mistake. Cross channel marketing is a messy problem and not a clean binary one that can easily be deciphered. The odds are you are not taking all variables into account. My advice is always try to poke holes in your data, look for interdependencies or other factors which may be influencing your data, test your hypothesis through agile methods, and please don’t forget to consult your experience and intuition. Strive to reach a balance between art and science.

I was recently invited to participate in an all day brainstorming session. The objective was to work through ideas on how a prominent travel brand could leverage “personalization” to create a great customer experience that would also drive their key business objectives.

I was very exited to be part of this team for the day, especially given the talent in the room. To kick of the day one of the groups prepared a 30 slide best practices deck. The idea was to refresh the group on who is effectively using personalization and who is not, as well as the pitfalls. Has your Tivo ever turned on you? Long story short we never made it past the second slide. That infamous second slide naively tried to offer a simple definition for the term Personalization, and distinction from it’s cousin segmentation. We debated the nuances between segmentation, personalization, and even customization for over five hours. I felt compelled to share my definition, even though I truly believe it doesn’t matter what you call it just as long as you deliver the goods.

Segmentation: This is the term most commonly used by traditional direct marketers to describe how they break down customers into logical groups or “segments” they aim to target. The level of sophistication used to determine the make up of these groups varies greatly. You can work with a simple segment like “past customer” or end up with hundreds of cluster codes and attributes “young Midwest family with kids that has shown interest in the past 30 days and has a value score of X and above” To drive content on you site based on simple segments like “young family with kids” is still considered segmentation driven experience. Think of looking at history to drive content.

7th grade was special.

I took a drag of my first cigarette (hated it), I started wearing corduroy Levis and flannel shirts (no, it wasn’t a grunge thing, it was 1975), and I made that timeless transition from awkward, shy, gawky young child to – well - awkward, shy, gawky teenager. But as much as I expanded my somewhat limited horizons, I also left something behind: knowledge.

Because in 1975, during my 13th year, I had a monumental lapse in judgment, which I am paying for dearly today: I dropped Spanish. In today’s marketplace the Hispanic audience is huge. And growing. If you’re a copywriter fluent in Spanish that makes you a better copywriter than me. It’s an invaluable feather to have in your cap. I wish I had it.

But I’m not totally bereft of bilingual ability.

I do speak another language. Fluently. Well, it’s not really that I speak it, as much as I have the ability to translate it. The language of Account Management. What? You’ve never heard of it? Oh wait, of course, you probably know it better as one of the many disciplines in the marketing world. But I assure you it’s a language unto itself. Then again, I do have a big advantage. Because nowhere is the language of Account Management spoken more – and misunderstood more - than around creatives. Don’t make the same mistakes I made all those years ago. Learn from my lessons. I give you the top 20, most common Account Management phrases, and their “creative” translations. Learn them. Live them. Know them.
What they say: “Wow, that concept is really interesting!” What they mean: “Please tell me you executed another concept.”

What they say: “Look, I’m not a copywriter, but…”

What they mean: “That copy is FPO – right?”

So I’ve gone on the record before about why I think paid search is over rated, granted I don’t mean to say a solid SEO or SEM strategy is not important to your business it is. I feel that search alone gets too much credit. If you look at search marketing as your primary or even worse your only proven tactic to drive business online you are screwed.

For that same reason having a “search only” firm (specially paid search) is not a great idea. I pose only one question would a search agency ever recommend you spend less money on search? Today’s most sophisticated and most successful online marketers track and optimize not in silos but across all tactics such as paid and natural search, networks, affiliates verticals, portals, viral & social media to strike the right balance of demand harvesting and demand creation to truly drive your business.

Search agencies need to evolve from a single point solution or they will die.