Citrus is a northwest ad marketing agency with 26 people with offices in Portland – Bend – Whitefish, MT (yup, handles the Lottery plus) and soon Memphis. Peter Levitan is its founder. I first met Peter in a recent ad agency search I conducted.

In their capabilities presentation, they were the only firm who actually sent in questions for the prospective client to consider. That was impressive. Let’s see if their answers to our 7 questions are equally impressive. I have to admit, I like the answer to question # 4 and no coaching was required! I also loved their “Dear Agency“ self promo piece.

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

We didn’t have an “a ha” moment so much as an “a ha” evolution.

In recent weeks, we have gone thorough an internal agency positioning review. We’re finally taking the time to do for ourselves what we do for our clients. This is not easy in the advertising/marketing/digital space because agencies tend to say the same things. Seems like it’s always the same blah blah. I suspect no one knows this better than Hitch.

During this process, we examined a range of positions that came from our brains as well as from the craniums (crania?) of other agencies. We also did quantitative online research with clients and learned that most think that all agencies are full of it. Just kidding. Well, sort of. Truth is, many clients and prospects think all agencies sound the same—no matter what we say.

So we decided to do something bold. Something different. Something a little crazy. We decided to tell the truth. We decided to tell the world what we really do for our clients: We move people. We move people through rational and emotional messaging. We move people from apathy to emotion, inertia to action (a purchase is among our clients’ favorite actions).

I guess you could say that our “a ha” moment revolves around the concept of MOVE.

What books are on your night stand or great blogs on your Google reader.

I believe I’m part of a dying breed: the magazine reader. I am committed—to the point of being slavish—to reading at least 30% of all New Yorker issues (near-impossible if you work), The Atlantic, The Economist, the last issue of Gourmet and stolen copies of Communication Arts.

The last great book I read was, in fact, a picture book. It was a look at how Avedon shot his famous series and book “In the American West.”

Works from the Blogosphere include Jeff Jarvis’s BuzzMachine (we invented the Internet together), random Blogs from the AdAge Power 150 blog list and “Things marketing people love.”

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

I always admire the speed of New York umbrella salespeople to hit just the right intersections when it starts to rain. Super targeted. Well-timed. Compellingly stated. Isn’t this what we all strive for?

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?

I’d like to make three points on pitching, all of which are derived from years of pitching as director of Saatchi’s business development group and now as the owner of a small agency.

First, most clients don’t have a clue about what they’re really looking for. It’s not their fault. They’re just trying to select an ad agency based on what are ultimately subjective criteria. Do I think that the agency is smart? Do I believe that the work is strong? Do I like them? Unless we’re talking about digital or direct response agencies that can deliver quantitative stories that directly relate sales increases to marketing activities, these traits don’t help selection a whole helluva lot. Ditto most case histories.

Point two: clients should use an agency search consultant. Selecting an ad agency is an important decision. Chances are, Bob in sales or Margo in procurement just aren’t going to cut it. (No offense, Bob and Margo.) Neither will a CMO who does a search every ten years. Hire an expert, please. I beg of you.

Finally, a note to agencies: Get. Over. It. Most industries use RFP’s. Just get past your egos and decide if pitching the potential client is a sound business decision. Determine if you have a chance based on your work and category experience. Look at the odds and decide if it makes financial sense. Did it make any financial or rationale sense for 1,284 agencies to pitch Zappos?

What does the agency of the future look like?

The agency of the future employs robots and goes to meetings in flying cars. Kidding.

Here’s something I’ve been thinking through for a while. I live in Portland. Portland has one of the highest populations of strategists, creative thinkers, copywriters, art directors and digital magicians in the country—maybe the world. What if we found a way to harness this creative and strategic power under the umbrella of brilliant management to deliver the new agency: Portland, Inc. I’d love to pitch Portland against Goodby, Weiden, Crispin and Ogilvy. Why not— they all use Portland freelancers anyway!

What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

Marketers need more smart ideas that will drive sales.

This dearth of sales-driven thinking isn’t due to agencies’ oversight. Marketers have made their own bed by deflating agency profit margins and reducing timeframes. (I just had a major hotel chain ask for a proposal to develop a new website for launch “late this year.” Um, its mid-October [when I'm writing this].) Simply put, clients have reduced our ability to spend the time required to develop the big ideas that are required to really win in today’s complex media space. Period.

Who do you admire and why?

Paris Hilton. I mean it. I have never seen someone build such a strong brand on so little. It was magical.

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Well, it’s been an exciting and busy summer.  I’m talking to lots of agencies lately who are hearing the phones starting to ring again–which is good news for everybody.  That’s partly why it’s been nearly a month since a new Ad Industry Innovators series, everybody’s busy, including me.  I’m a little over two weeks from finishing up the first Hitch search–with a few other interesting potentials on the horizon so stay tuned for exciting news!

Today’s Ad Industry Innovator is a shout out to the Emerald City with a Seattle agency called Creature.  New Business Director, Barton Bodell described Creature as their clients’ wild card agency.  The folks clients go to when they don’t want same old same old.  I thought that was a great description, so I’m going with it.

I interviewed Robson Grieve, who is Creature’s Managing Director.  He came to the agency after being a Creature client con Corbis.  ( 5 pts for reading that correctly out loud.)

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

The big “aha” moment for Creature happened back in Amsterdam, when Matt and Jim (co-creative directors) were talking about starting an agency. After working in a couple of the biggest and best agencies in the US (Wieden & Kennedy and Goodby Silverstein), they went to Europe and saw a different way of doing things. This old world+new world experience led the guys to the simple philosophy that “the best media space you can buy is in someone’s mind.” That idea really defines how we look at the changing relationship between consumers and brands, and it has shaped how we do our work on a day-to-day basis. The evolution from a “broadcast” model where advertisers were telling people what to think, to more of a cooperative model where we are starting a conversation with people and incorporating them in to the brand development process.

The truth is, however, that we are having “aha” moments all the time and we look at our model as a work in progress. We are constantly studying our capabilities and looking for ways to make Creature more relevant to current and future clients. Every year we seem to undertake one or two big changes, and we are constantly challenging the status quo and updating our business model. Essentially, we look at the search for “aha” moments as an every day part of the job.

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

I almost never read about advertising or business, because I find most business popular books to be a little too orderly in their analysis.  There are a few notable exceptions, of course, but in general I try to find interesting/thought provoking books rather than books about business.  I’m working on a pretty scary book right now – it’s called “Global Catastrophes and Trends.”  It is a comprehensive look at the risks we face in the next 50 years by a university professor named Vaclav Smil.  Smil has written a lot about energy and the environment, and has a very data driven perspective on projecting the future of the world.  Before that, I read “The Black Swan: The impact of the Highly Improbable,” which was a really inspiring book that basically reinforced my belief that it is more important to be open to new things than it is to be expert at pattern recognition.

In terms of blogs, I read Mark Cuban’s blogmaverick.com a lot because he is such a firebrand, and has the ability to separate the hype from reality in new media.  For social media stuff I read Logic+Emotion.  He has a nice theory-based approach to explaining social structures online.  I am also a bit of an economic news junky, and my jumping off point there is a blog called “calculated risk” which has some interesting articles, and a wealth of links to top econ authors.

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

Michael Jackson. Look at how popular he is all of a sudden. Tough way to do it, but you have to give the guy credit for his commitment to the brand.

Seriously, this is a really difficult question to answer because some of the most examples that people use as great “marketing companies” aren’t marketing companies at all – they just make great products that people love. I would say that I have been pretty impressed with Fed Ex and how they have incorporated golf in to their brand. They created a great event with the PGA (The Fed Ex Cup), and they have succeeded in making the connection between golf and fed ex very natural through their advertising.

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?

I think it is convenient to complain about the RFP process. Is it fun to put a bunch of resources in to a high risk endeavor, with disappointment the most statistically likely outcome? Of course not, but I don’t see how the industry could come together and invent a method for pitching could be set up that would solve all the problems. Competitive bidding is a part of almost every industry’s procurement process, so agencies aren’t alone in being disappointed because they didn’t get a piece of business. Watch “Glengarry Glen Ross.” Life isn’t fair.

The thing agencies need to decide is how much they are willing to give in this process. This is an individual and situational decision. For example, at one extreme, some clients are demanding ownership of all ideas created for the pitch, and agencies just need to decide if they are willing to go that far. In some cases, the answer will be yes, in some cases it will be no.

There have been some crazy pitches the last few months (the famous “twitterfp” and Zappos are on people’s minds) that have people buzzing, and I would say that if they agencies don’t like the process, they should sit out. Or better yet, if agencies don’t like the process they should work with the client to shape the right process.

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

It is interesting to try to predict what the agency of the future looks like, because we are likely to be mostly wrong no matter what we predict. I think it is safe to say that it is likely we will be more similar to strategy consultants like Bain or McKinsey than we will be to old-line Madison Avenue agencies. I also think it is safe to say that we are going to need to be “cross trained” at every level, because the world isn’t going to be neatly organized by media like it has been in the past.

I do think that a lot of the speculation around ownership of ideas that has gone on is a little misleading. Big brands don’t need to share risk with agencies, so the expectation that they share rewards in a significant way is probably unfounded. Pay-for-performance is coming in some way, but I think it is going to end up being more of a cost cutting measure by corporations than it will be a chance for agencies to grow their piece of the pie.

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

Marketers need agencies to solve problems – not just make ads. Too often agencies decide to make ads, even when they know that won’t solve the underlying problem. Our clients need us to be ready and willing to look at each engagement as a chance to solve an important problem – sometimes that will be through ads, sometimes it will be through something entirely unexpected.

7. Who do you admire and why?

I would say that I admire my business partners, Matt and Jim. They have had a lot of fortitude and foresight as entrepreneurs, and I am fortunate to get to work with them on a day-to-day basis.

In the agency business, I admire the guys at Goodby Silverstien. They have managed to reinvent themselves over and over, and that is no small feat in any industry.

I look at Tiger Woods as a role model from a competitive perspective. He has such great focus, and usually finds a way to be win even when he isn’t at his best.

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Today’s Ad Industry Innovator is Jake McKee from Ant’s Eye View.  Talk about a niche, these guys get customer engagement like Picasso gets painting.

The founders have very diverse backgrounds: Jake McKee built his reputation playing with Legos and Sean O’Driscoll in a company you may have heard of in Redmond, WA called Microsoft. These guys are bright.  They’re insightful.  Ant’s Eye View occupies a place in marketing that’s not only unique, but 5 years ago, wasn’t even talked about–now every company needs to be listening.  The voice of your Customer demands to be heard.

Ant’s Eye View recognizes that as companies grow, often they unintentionally detach from the customer relationship and miss out on crucial conversations happening about their brand.   Through grassroots, online and offline collaborative processes, Ant’s Eye View helps companies engage with those customers by developing strategies that identify, address and leverage those conversations.

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

Actually we’ve developed our company specifically around the aha moment! Our team has been doing customer engagement work for a combined total of something like 40 years. We get that this customer engagement stuff is the path to amazing business success and customer loyalty. When Sean O’Driscoll left Microsoft and when I left LEGO, it was because we saw that so many of those companies and agencies talking about this stuff had never been on the frontlines of customer engagement and we thought this “in the trenches” understanding was important to share.

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

Well, selfishly, I just got my first copy of the 10^th anniversary edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto, where I had the extreme honor of being asked to write the afterword. On top of that, I just got a review copy of Angela Connor’s 18 Rules of Community Engagement. It’s an exciting to book to have gotten in the mail: small, tactical, and smart.

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

One of my favorite examples, an example that makes me just giddy with excitement is the new and much written about Skittles.com. I once had someone ask me “how do we create community and social media for a particular soda pop?” At its core, the question was really about an agency trying to understand how to pitch “social” to clients. But the problem with the question is that soda pop in itself doesn’t have much inherent social interest. Marketers can work hard to create some type of inherent value, but what Skittles realized is that it would be smarter to simply highlight the conversations, interest, and inherent value already being created by their customers. Replacing nearly their entire Web site with a floating nav item that links to Wikipedia articles, YouTube videos, and a Twitter search. Brilliant. It’s the most compelling CPG Web site I’ve seen to date. If I meet the person that sold this into the organization, I’m buying them a drink for work well done.

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?

I do agree that the pitch/RFP process is broken in today’s marketing climate, but not for the reason so many agency people talk about. The agency focused argument is one that goes back years, well before the rise of the Social Web: pitches are little more than free spec work that allows clients to get far too much for free and agencies to deal with too much risk.

From my perspective, the problem is that the pitch/RFP process work happens almost entirely void of true strategy development activity. When developing strategy, and certainly strategy work around social engagement immersed marketing, you want to have a better understanding of your customers by first engaging. Listen first, generate ideas second. But a pitch to get business is inherently based in ideas. Certainly agencies are doing research, often expensive research, but that misses a great many opportunities for the client. My work at LEGO had me listening for 6 months to adult fans who were angry that the company had ignored them for decades. After joining fans in basements, classrooms and restaurants to hear their concerns, not only did I learn, but I proved to them that the company was honestly interested in knowing more about how to serve and work with them.

How can that happen if your ideas are being largely generated as a means to first win the business?

What does the agency of the future look like?

I don’t know what it looks like, but I know it has to have a new billing model. In my opinion, traditional marketing agencies will only be able to move to a place where they can more effectively help their customers understand and plan for a more social customer experience once they figure out how to charge for the time that that takes to do. We’re not talking about limited, specific campaigns anymore. Or at least not those alone. But agencies are setup to bill against that model, and it’s nearly impossible for them to effectively teach rather than implement.

What do marketers need that agencies are not giving them?

An agency that is happy, both in approach and in billing model, to train their clients to not need them after a reasonable period of time. Today’s marketing and agency culture is based on the fundamental principle that the bigger check the brand writes, the less work the brand’s marketing person has to do in the daily grind work. When headcount is a core metric of a division’s success, writing checks, even big checks is easy but hiring is not. Unfortunately that simply doesn’t work in today’s environment. When I talk to one of my favorite brands, I don’t want to talk to their agency, I want to talk to the employees of the brand. Agencies have traditionally existed to take the load off the shoulders of their clients, but today they have to be switching to helping their clients learn techniques and tactics for being able to better engage, to scale that engagement, and to support the daily grind in a way that helps build internal competency.

I’m not suggesting that agencies don’t have or shouldn’t have long-term clients. My suggestion is that agencies large and small should be working with their clients “teach, learn, own” model. Once the client owns the project, the (hopefully and expected) success will drive a more complex project that will start the process over.

Oh, and to be clear, I’m talking about marketing agencies, not advertising agencies. There is a often forgotten difference between the two and sadly they’ve gotten mixed up into one concept when we talk about this stuff.

Who do you admire and why?

Easy to explain, hard to name. I really respect and enjoy meeting the practitioners at brands that are doing this social stuff every day, toiling away in relative obscurity. You may know the “social media experts” who blog and twitter and speak constantly, but do you know the folks at H&R Block who are convincing a company working in a highly regulated industry to get involved in Second Life? Do you know who convinced Skittles.com to give up thousands of dollars of Flash development and replace it with Social Web content? Do you know who at Alaska Airlines is the face behind the official twitter stream? If not, you should find out. Those are the true experts, the experts you can learn from.

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I started chatting with David Deal of Razorfish after reading their brilliant 2009 Digital Outlook Report, which has been quoted many times on this blog.  

To say Razorfish is tops in the agency world is an understatment.  I’ve always been impressed by the powerhouse that they are in the marketplace–the braintrust they bring to the industry.  They’ve helped reshape marketing conversations by leading public, transparent discussions on how digital touches all aspects of the marketing enterprise.  They demonstrate this position every day in their work and on twitter, employee blogs, Slideshare, Vimeo and YouTube–a public sharing of information that inspires everyone to reach higher.

Razorfish has raised the industry standard for what’s acceptable and what digital marketing can and should be.

I think you’ll like David’s point-of-view, and hey, you gotta love a guy who lists Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page among his inspirations.  

David says of Razorfish:

[We use] digital to help companies build their businesses.  Sometimes building a business means repositioning a brand for a new audience, like what we’ve done with Mattel for the Barbie brand and for Intel with its Core i7 microprocessor.  Sometimes building a business means strengthening a brand’s digital presence, as we’ve done through with CNN through the redesign of CNN.com.  Or we might help a company create a digital presence altogether, as we did with Postopia.  Razorfish combines thought leadership and full services globally.”

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

The aha moment for me occurred in 2006, when a Razorfish colleague asked me to help her improve her employee blog.  I realized that Razorfish needed to inject Social Influence Marketing into our marketing and communications outreach.  I also understood that marketing at Razorfish needed to involve the diverse voices of our employees more effectively – including my own. Not long after that experience, I helped create the Razorfish employee blogging program, which was a team effort involving some passionate and dedicated employees like Shiv Singh, Lauren Nguyen, Amy Vickers, and Ray Velez.  I also became a more active participant in the social world by launching my own blog, Superhypeblog.com, among other activities.  We’ve come a long way in a short amount of time.  I like how Razorfish is using Twitter as a means to disseminate thought leadership and to be responsive to the marketplace.  But we have a lot of work to do. 

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

My nightstand includes Endgame, 1945 by David Stafford; The Man with the Golden Gun by Ian Fleming, Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers; Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller; and a Hardy Boys book that my daughter and I are reading together, The Secret Warning.  (By the way, I think marketers should frequently read books written for children. Seeing the world through the eyes of children is humbling, energizing, and eye opening.)  I regularly follow Razorfish blogs like FEED: The Digital Design Blog, and insights from the industry like Guy Kawasaki’s blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang, and Andrew Frank’s Gartner blog.  I’m also a sucker for Perez Hilton.  Because I blog myself, I look across the blogosphere for diverse ideas, especially content that doesn’t conveniently fit my job description.  I also gain inspiration from music.  To that end, I think the Facebook wall posts by Mikal Gilmore are better than anything I’ve seen in the blogosphere.

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

I think the Barbie 50^th Anniversary celebration is outstanding because Mattel is taking advantage of the interactive and social nature of digital.  Mattel’s business challenge is to reposition the Barbie brand to grown-up women while celebrating Barbie’s 50^th.  Instead of investing into TV, Mattel has created a digital lifestyle for Barbie that taps into our cultural affinity for Barbie and recasts her as a fashion icon.  For instance, a YouTube channel features Barbie’s show from the Mercedes-Benz fashion week, among other content.  Through the YouTube channel, a microsite, Twitter account, popular Facebook page, display advertising, paid search, and a blog written in Barbie’s own voice, Mattel has worked with Razorfish to connect with women across the entire digital world.  I also like this example because it shows how you can embrace Social Influence Marketing in a strategic way – it’s not just about creating a Facebook page but stitching together several touch points in context of a larger digital marketing effort.

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 RFP process will always be demanding.  Making a decision to partner with an agency takes careful consideration.  I think the bigger issue is making sure clients and agencies ensure they are the best fit for each other beyond the RFP process.  Agencies should differentiate themselves more clearly, which makes it easier for buyers to choose among alternatives.  Agencies should also talk less about themselves and more about their clients’ business problems.  For their part, potential clients can increase their chances of finding the right agency partner by ensuring that the senior-most decision maker owns and leads the selection process.     

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

The agency of the future is a hybrid consultancy and agency.  The agency of the future should challenge its clients with fresh ideas that improve the client’s business.  The agency of the future should also build experiences, not generate one-way messages.  The agency of the future also helps clients become more responsive to their customers through creative forms of marketing like Social Influence Marketing (or employing social influencers and media to meet one’s marketing and business needs). 

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

Agencies need to do a better job providing their clients fresh insights into consumer behavior.  Focus groups need to give way to ethnographic research combined with measureable web-based analytics.   My Razorfish colleague Andrea Harrison recently introduced Social Influence Research, a new approach in which we study consumer purchasing decisions in context of their social relationships.  We’re all social beings, right?  So we need an approach to understand our clients’ customers in context of their social worlds.  With ideas like Social Influence Research, Razorfish seeks to address marketers’ unmet needs.   

7.   Who do you admire and why?

I admire George Harrison and C.S. Lewis because they expressed their spiritual journeys through their art.  I admire Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page because of their passion for innovation.  Their legacies transcend their guitar playing.  Jimi Hendrix was the movie equivalent of scriptwriter, actor, director, and producer.  He didn’t break rules; he made new ones.  And Jimmy Page figured out how to use the studio to create layers of sound that no one else has touched.  Whenever I’m collaborating with a group to try out new ideas, I draw upon them for inspiration.

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Next week after the Memorial Day holiday, check out David J. Deal from Razorfish on the Ad Industry Innovator series.  The following week, Spike Jones from Brains on Fire.  Then Scott Goodson from Strawberry Frog…and more. 

It’s a jam packed line up.  So tune in and don’t miss a thing~

Like this series?   Tell a friend.  Subscribe.

Know an agency or individual who you’d like to see profiled?  Contact me.

New series from the client side coming up soon along with a chance to win an autographed copy of Guy Kawasaki‘s new book Reality Check.

Until next week, have a safe and fun holiday.  Hope it’s sunny whever you are.  And for our international readers:  Happy Weekend of the 23rd of May!  What holidays do you have coming up?

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