There’s a ton of insight in Ken Auletta’s book Googled, which chronicles the Google’s rise as a global Superpower. One of my favorite lines is from co-founder, Larry Page and it’s today’s Friday Philosophy:

“Have a healthy disregard for the impossible.”

-Larry Page.

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Hitch is a consultancy that helps marketers hire the right marketing agency.

The ad agency business is tough–everybody knows it, but things are getting better.
[Cue angelic music!]

A lot of marketers are hiring new ad agencies despite what you read.

Besides stand-out strategic work, one thing always separates thriving from surviving agencies: Attitude.

Not to come off as Tony Robbins, but here are 10 things I don’t hear from agencies who are winning new business:

1. Clients are wrong.
You’re not making your case–or maybe…you’re wrong.

2. Clients don’t get it.
You haven’t explained it well.

3. Clients are stupid (jerks, assholes, etc).
Leave the business now.

4. The work they have us doing is crap.
Show your brilliance. Imagine if Goodby, Silverstein & Partners thought that about milk.

5. They’d rather see us go out of business than pay us what we’re worth.
The best clients still want their agencies to succeed.

6. We should fire those bastards.
If you’re at this point, maybe that’d probably be best for everyone.

7.  They don’t respect us.
You haven’t earned it.

8.  They don’t appreciate our brilliance.
Perhaps you’re just off target. Dig in and collaborate. Or maybe you suck–they just don’t have the heart to tell you.

9. This RFP is a piece of crap.
Tighten it up. Show the client where they missed the mark. Stand out. Color outside the lines. Take a risk. Or don’t answer it.

10. This budget hardly makes it worth the work.
Fight for more money (but be able to back it up). Consider taking it at the budget offered, but if you do you don’t get to hold that against the client.

Have fun! This is still one of the best businesses in the world. Remember why you got into advertising in the first place and bring that to work every day. Your teammates will thank you and your clients will swoon.

NBC Olympic Pulse is my newest online obsession.
Designed by the  smart folks at Stamen Design, Olympics Pulse takes the best of twitter, tumblr, and the real time web, mashes it and serves it up right in front of your eyes. Talk about live online, this is where it’s going.

Real time tracking is certainly not new technology, Google began real time trend watching in their search at the end of 2009.

I’ve known about Twitterfall long before that. Twitterfall is a great way to track live social media conversations in real time.

But I’m mostly interested in what happens as this technology goes more mainstream and customizable by the everyday user. For example, I started playing around a simple twitter tracker from wiffiti that shows real time results for what’s being said about any 5 topics you’re interested in. Build your own at Wiffiti.com, it takes about 2 minutes. The one below tracks what people are saying about Marketing, Advertising, PR, Branding and Social Media.  It also shows photos from Fickr tagged with those keywords.

So far Stamen Designs’ projects, have everyone beat, in my opinion but the real time internet is just going to get better and better.

TRY IT: What topics will you track in real time?  Leave me a comment below with a link to your Wiffiti if you’re so inclined. Want to see your tweets show up in real time? Click on the photo above to launch the Wiffiti in a new window then text @wif17567 + your message to 87884 to see it in action.

Editors’ Note:  The real time link was on the blog but at the time this post went live Wiffiti was upgrading servers and it was slowing down my site. For now, click on the photo of the live feed and launch the real time feed in a new window.

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Hitch is a consultancy that helps marketers hire the right marketing agency.

A recent Ad Age article on “Serial Reviewers” warned clients who frequently oust agencies, like 1-800-Flowers, Quiznos, Chipotle and BMW, are “hurting their brands and risking a bad reputation” in the advertising industry. What the article didn’t say was that CMO tenure plays a bigger part in brand erosion than any agency’s missteps. If clients fix that–they fix a much bigger threat to their brand than a poor agency choice. They might even save a good agency relationship.

The best agency in the world will struggle with a client who replaces its CMO every two years.Take Chipotle: even though they’ve cycled four different agencies in six years, they’ve only recently named a CMO.Quiznos changed Chief Marketing Officers three times in six years. When the C-suite shifts, companies experience a lack of leadership and clear direction–the kiss of death for an agency relationship. And potentially more damaging to the brand than hiring the worst agency on the planet.

Agencies aren’t without fault. Clients don’t make changes when everything works. But if things seize up because of musical chairs in the executive suite tell your agency, because even if you don’t, they know it. It’s human nature to blame the other party and show them the door. Ultimately, client/agency relationships are stronger when both sides are willing to point out their failures. That honesty and transparency may open up a dialogue to fix the problems before the need to change agencies–and that could be good for everyone.

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Hitch is a consultancy that helps marketers hire the right marketing agency.

Today’s Ad Industry Innovator comes from New Marketing Labs, which you may know better if I tell you the name of its founder, Chris Brogan. Chris is the author of the NYT best seller Trust Agents and he’s in the top 3 on AdAge’s Power150.  Being some of the most recognizable social media marketers, these guys have a nice niche. Awesome alliteration, ay?

It’s fun to profile a group like New Marketing Labs because they represent those specialists who have stepped in to challenge the traditional agency model and offer unique and much needed services to brands. Anyway, Hanes, Sony, Citrix, Comcast, Molson Coors, PepsiCo, AMD and Microsoft seem to think so.

This is not Brogan!

I spoke to New Marketing Labs’ General Manager, Justin Levy about what makes their firm stand out in the marketplace. Besides his many duties keeping everyone rowing in the same direction, he is the co-organizer of their Inbound Marketing Summit and Inbound Marketing Bootcamp.  Prior to joining Brogan’s group Justin was Managing Director at an SEO public relations firm and President of Talent Network.  His answer to question # 7 practically had me weeping.  In all, it was a pleasure to get the perspective of such a well-rounded gent.

1. What was the aha moment when you realized “our company needs to be doing things differently than we have been”?

New Marketing Labs didn’t go through that period because we were founded to help medium and large businesses either figure out that aha moment or navigate their way through it .  We assist our clients with using these online tools to move the needles that are important to them.  We help them to enhance their communications, marketing, customer service and PR plans by using these new media tools to reach their prospects, customers and fans.

2. What books are on your nightstand or great blogs on your Google reader?

I am an avid reader and information junkie.  At any given time I am subscribed to a few hundred RSS feeds, read a few books per month and read the Washington Post, Boston Globe, NY Times and Wall St. Journal on a daily basis.  I love the consumption of information!

Right now I have about 15 books waiting to be read but I am currently reading the following books:

The Audacity to Win by David Plouffe
Six Pixels of Separation by Mitch Joel
The Back of the Napkin by Dan Roam

You’ll usually find me reading about marketing, business, lifestyle design, politics, productivity or food related books.

3. Give me an example of marketing you think is brilliant and why.

Dell has been doing an excellent job at using online tools to help them market to, learn from and listen to their prospects and customers.  From generating $2 million dollars with just one of their Twitter accounts, to IdeaStorm, a website where Dell allows their customers to generate new ideas for the company and then vote those ideas up and down, to how Dell uses the listening and monitoring company, Radian6, to help them be involved in conversations taking place around the web.  Dell has also done a great job at showing that they’re human.  Dell uses both corporate accounts (e.g. DellLatitude) and personal Twitter accounts with their staff (e.g. RichardatDell).  Using the employee name in the Twitter account helps to show the human side of the company and in turn, that makes stronger bonds with their customer base.

4. We’ve all read that the pitch / RFP process is broken.  Many agencies aren’t even interested in competing in pitches.  Do you see an alternative to this process?

The pitch/RFP process still serves a purpose in that it provides structure and the ability for the prospective client to walk down a check list to compare potential agencies who they’re interested in working with.  Where the pitch and RFP process suffer is that they don’t usually showcase the human side of both the agency and prospective client.  We have a natural tendency to want to do business with friends.  Therefore, I think agencies need to take opportunities to develop relationships with the people who make up the corporations.  Try being helpful to them in some way or connecting with them by sending a hand written note.

5. What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future is more of a partner with the company that they’re working with instead of a typical agency/client relationship.  The agency of the future will need to ensure that they’re delivering value to their clients and will need to provide hard data to quantify and prove that data.  That’s not to suggest that agencies currently aren’t providing value to their clients.  But, with budgets continuing to tighten, companies are looking at what hard value they’re receiving from their vendors and agencies.  There is a difference in using new media tools that can provide hard data versus data that suggests that an approximate audience size probably saw your message.

6. What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

Marketers need data that will help show them the value of what they’re investing their time and budget in.  Marketers need an agency that understands the complexities of their responsibilities, their department, their company and their industry and have the tools available to help navigate through it all.  Marketers want agencies that provide education, both internally and externally to help them and their staff to grow.

7. Who do you admire and why?

I admire a variety of people from many different industries and for different reasons.   If I had to choose one person though, I would choose my mom.  Unfortunately my mother lost a long battle with Lupus during my senior year in high school.  For the better part of my life my mother struggled to deal with a disabling disease.  Lupus, as well as some other factors, closed many doors for my mom at an early age.  Even while struggling with a disease that was constantly kicking her while she was down, she did everything in her power to see that her son, me, had everything I could ever need to help position me to be successful now.  Whether it was hand-written math books to work on over the Summer, pressuring me to apply myself in school, teaching me how to deal with hardship at a young age, or any of the may other life lessons she taught me.

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Hitch is a consultancy that helps marketers hire the right marketing agency.