Allen Adamson on Securing Deals with Storytelling, Preparation, and Agency-Client Synergy
Allen Adamson is a noted industry expert in all disciplines of branding. He has worked with a broad spectrum of consumer and corporate businesses in industries ranging from packaged goods and technology, to health care and financial services, to hospitality and entertainment. Given his broad perspective and depth of experience, Allen is able to help clients see and seize opportunities before the competition, activating solutions that enable them to shift ahead of the market, generating long-term value and increased brand equity. He and his teams help clients identify what truly matters to the audiences they serve – what is relevant to them – and deliver on it brilliantly.
Allen’s newest book, Seeing the How: Achieving Market Advantage by Transforming the Stuff We Do, Not the Stuff We Buy, published in May 2023, focuses on the consumer experience as a competitive advantage, and how this change in perspective has allowed companies to achieve dramatic growth and categorical leadership. The book’s driving idea was sparked by Allen’s recognition that experience transformation has been fast outpacing product transformation as a winning and sustainable marketing strategy.
His previous books, BrandSimple, BrandDigital, The Edge: 50 Tips from Brands that Lead and, Shift Ahead, are used as textbooks in higher education business programs across the country.
Allen’s multifaceted knowledge of all things brand and branding is the result of having worked on both the agency side of the business, and the client side. He spent the earliest part of his career as a marketing executive in packaged goods, at Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer goods companies, where he oversaw a broad range of consumer products. He is proud to acknowledge that he spent a lot of his early business life in supermarket aisles, perusing one aisle or another in order to gain an understanding of the consumers’ outlook– and that of his brands’ competitors.
On the agency side, Allen held senior management positions at iconic advertising firms, including Ogilvy & Mather and DMB&B, before arriving at Landor Associates, a full-spectrum brand consultancy dealing with brand development and the myriad factors that makes one brand more successful than another. He eventually rose to the position of Chairman. Under his leadership, the company partnered with a variety of global brands, including Accenture, GE, Johnson & Johnson, FedEx, HBO, Marriott, MetLife, P&G, Sony, and Verizon. Additionally, he guided non-profit organizations, including the 9/11 Memorial and Museum, the Central Park Conservancy, and the Council on Foreign Relations, among others.
For the past several years, Allen has been an Adjunct Professor and frequent guest lecturer at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell University, where he lectures on the significant and numerous challenges brands are confronting – and overcoming – in a fast-changing marketplace. He also serves as the brand expert-in-residence at the Berkley Center for Entrepreneurship at NYU Stern, working with student entrepreneurs from across NYU to help them develop and execute their brand “story,” providing guidance on the many aspects required to launch successful brands.
Given the depth and breadth of his expertise – his perspective of brands from both an academic and a long-standing practitioner’s point of view – Allen has been called on as an expert witness for companies across a number of industries involved in litigation over the protection of their brand assets, the distinguishing characteristics that differentiate one brand from another. His multidimensional experience makes him unparalleled in his ability to offer valuable insight to those defending brands that have come under competitive threat and encroachment of these assets.
A sought-after industry commentator, Allen has appeared on ABC News, NBC’s Today Show, CNBC’s Squawk Box and Closing Bell, and Fox Business Network. He is often quoted in publications including The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Advertising Age, the Washington Post, and Forbes. He also regularly writes a column on current branding topics. He speaks on branding for a range of professional organizations, corporate events, and industry conferences.
Allen is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Metaforce (www.metaforce.com), a disruptive marketing and brand consultancy which, unlike traditional firms, takes a multi-disciplinary channel-agnostic approach to marketing challenges. It was created to help leaders understand all the forces at work inside and outside their businesses to identify strategies yielding the highest returns. Once determining the best strategy, Metaforce’s consortium of partners, each industry expert in their field, pivots to help clients brilliantly act on and execute customer experiences in the market. Metaforce combines the best aspects of brand management, strategy, and experience consultancies to deliver solutions that ensure its clients shift ahead of the dramatic marketplace changes to meet fast-evolving customer needs.
Allen received his B.S. from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University, and an MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business.
We’re speaking with Allen today about the art of pitching and how storytelling, preparation, and agency-client synergy can secure deals. We are treated to his valuable insights from his diverse experiences in filmmaking, advertising, and working with Unilever. He explains the importance of a polished pitch and how a cinematic approach to presenting can captivate clients. We’ll also discuss strategies for differentiation in pitches, the magic of engaging presentations, and the evolving landscape of marketing agencies and client relationships. Looking towards the future, we examine how to navigate the changes with a focus on team chemistry and tailored client strategies.
Topics covered during this episode include:
Why preparation and rehearsal are critical for a compelling presentation.
The role that having a creative idea plays in differentiating agency pitches.
How emotional engagement and surprise factor into crafting an unforgettable pitch.
Why team chemistry is essential for a successful pitch.
How to navigate the dynamic relationship between agencies and clients.
What strategies secure long-term client-agency partnerships.
Some personal stores that illustrate the importance of synergy in pitches.
What future disruptions in marketing might impact agency-client relations.
How thought leadership and authoring a book can enhance your professional status.
Why meticulous focus and editing are necessary for pitch presentations.
More tips about how agencies can differentiate themselves to stand out to prospects.
What interactive strategies can make pitch meetings memorable for clients.
How to effectively personalize team introductions during pitches.
Why team dynamics during pitches should be likened to casting for a Broadway show.
What upcoming challenges traditional marketing agencies may face.
How freelancers are increasingly filling expertise gaps in agency pitches.
Why it’s crucial to tailor strategies to the client’s specific needs during pitches.
How to create a winning pitch by balancing standout ideas with thorough RFP responses.
Why it’s beneficial to engage clients in workshops before pitching to them.
Mike (00:27.313) Alan, thanks ever so much for joining me on Hegel, the B2B Sales Club podcast. It's a pleasure to have you with us.
Allen Adamson (00:29.922) Yep.
Allen Adamson (00:45.186) Thanks for inviting me, Mike. I'm looking forward to talking.
Mike (00:47.969) Excellent. So we had a obviously a pre-conversation about some questions, but before we get into that, a bit about your background. Just tell our listeners who you are, what you do and what your background is.
Allen Adamson (00:59.178) Well, way back when I was gonna be a filmmaker and found out that being a filmmaker, I needed to starve an indefinitely long period of time and be lucky. So I went back to business school and out of business school, I made smaller films at Ogilvy and made there. Not on the creative side, fortunately, but I got to watch and see that.
Mike (01:02.585) Uh-huh.
Mike (01:17.839) Okay.
Allen Adamson (01:25.106) And then I decided that if I was ever going to try the client side, it would be good to do that earlier in my career. And so I moved over to Unilever for many years. And it was a great experience because despite what I tried for many years to convince people, there wasn't that much difference between one soap and another. So you forked it. Yeah, I know this is going to go viral instantly.
Mike (01:33.229) Amazing. Yeah.
Mike (01:46.088) Who'd have thought, Alan? Who'd have thought? Yes.
Allen Adamson (01:55.25) figure out who would be, how to position things, how to talk about benefits, how to focus, how to make lemonade out of lemons. And then after that, I went back to work for, I liked advertising more the creative culture, and I started working ironically for P&G at one of their agencies, and it was a great learning experience. Same principle, but.
Mike (01:59.618) Hmm.
Mike (02:04.898) Yeah, exactly.
Allen Adamson (02:23.71) Uh, you know, for many categories we were chasing P and G. So it was interesting to see how they, how they figured out, you know, what your problem was. And then had their R and D people develop a solution. You don't want to like to change diapers. So all of a sudden there's Pampers or you hate dusting floors and you're a Swiffer. Um, so many years I did that. And, uh, and then, uh, finally I joined a firm called Landor, um, which is a global brand consulting firm. And I had a great run there. And, uh, the
Mike (02:27.452) Okay.
Allen Adamson (02:52.626) Most recent chapter is I've been an entrepreneur, doing a lot of pitching, and with a different business model. So that's more than you asked for, but hopefully the podcast is not completely over yet.
Mike (03:06.634) No, we still have time to go. It's okay. And of course you've missed out the books. You're also an acclaimed author.
Allen Adamson (03:12.682) Yes, I've, um, and that happened because of an agency pitch, because I had gone in early in my career to an agency pitch and in the conference room was a book from my competitor on the, on the credenza. And I go, Hey, you know, it's going to be hard to beat that. And sure enough, I lost that pitch. And I asked him why it was about that other firm had thought leadership and, uh, some more gravitas than our firm at the time did. And I said, gee, I never thought about that, but.
I ended up starting with my first book, Brand Simple. And once you learn how to do it once, and it's a challenging process, the second time becomes easier a little bit. And I've done it.
Mike (03:55.717) I'll need to pick your brains because I'm considering a book. Thought leadership is a great topic. I was ex-big five consulting firms and it was their lifeblood. If you weren't a thought leader, you were never going to be a partner. You had to have an opinion and it had to be something differentiated that stood out. It had to have depth to it. I think a book is a great way of reinforcing.
Allen Adamson (04:06.062) Mm-hmm.
Allen Adamson (04:21.49) Yeah, in any consulting business, it's a life. But I remember the CEO of the company saying, Alan, we'd like to promote you. You know how to do it. But all your competitors are in the Wall Street Journal being quoted and at age. And you're doing a nice job at the grindstone, but no one knows who the heck you are. And so that was another factor saying, if I don't do something bolder, then get a high client satisfaction score on the last assignment.
Mike (04:41.91) Correct.
Allen Adamson (04:50.734) going to be challenging.
Mike (04:52.085) Yeah, and I think all of the big thought leaders like you that I know, they have books and it's still part of the armory of thought leadership and credibility. And it gets you published in all sorts of amazing places.
Allen Adamson (05:08.586) Yeah, anyone can do a post on LinkedIn. It's a little more ambitious to do more than a post.
Mike (05:11.237) Correct.
Mike (05:14.953) I might be emailing you afterwards about how on earth you go about starting to write a book. But I have got a research base. I'm building a research base, so that's a good start.
Allen Adamson (05:23.934) Well, it's a fun journey when you look in a rear view mirror. So let's leave it at that.
Mike (05:27.441) Exactly. So, questions. So, let's start with a common agency problem when pitching to clients is differentiation. Every client I talk to, every agency I work with, they have a very similar problem. So, what are your insights as a global branding expert, as a thought leader, about what agencies can do to truly differentiate themselves in the eyes of their prospects?
Allen Adamson (05:54.058) I'll go back to sort of a brand framework, which I used when I was pitching at a large agency. And that is, it came from a quote from the New York Times columnist, Tom Friedman, who often spoke about this notion of average is over. And I applied that, which saying that there's so much excellence out there. If you do something okay, it's not going to help you stand out anymore. But in regards to what people share and talk about, because
Mike (06:18.469) Correct.
Allen Adamson (06:22.754) pitching and winning is about people saying, did you see that presentation? It was incredible. They, you know, this firm did blank, but no one shares average. You know, you look at all social media, even coffee, you know, even getting a coffee at the water cooler, no one says it was an okay meeting. They, you know, there were no typos and they had 150 PowerPoint slides and it was okay. So the first thing is realize that, you know, figure out.
Mike (06:43.033) Yeah.
Allen Adamson (06:51.71) and focus and what's one thing you can do in that meeting that will be surprising, unexpected, that would get somebody to say, hey, I had a meeting with Mike's agency. And do you know what they did? That was sort of different. And I did this years ago, I was working for an ad agency and we were pitching Nikon cameras when people needed cameras before. You can look that up on Wikipedia that, you know, before the iPhone you needed.
Mike (07:15.307) Oh yeah.
Mike (07:20.913) Correct, exactly.
Allen Adamson (07:21.582) Anyway, we knew that Nikon, we just obviously don't do much research to knew that, you know, Nikon was the camera of choice for photojournalists, for people in the jungle taking pictures of lions, as well as in war. So I happened to have a connection who was at ABC News, and it was during one of the Middle East wars. And I said, Do you think we can get some satellite time? And do you think you can organize me to speak to five or six photojournalists?
Mike (07:51.333) Wow.
Allen Adamson (07:51.478) and they did a video up from the front lines where they were in Humvees with troops, and they were holding their cameras, and there were quotes like, this is the only camera, you know, I take to war, you know, this is, you know, this has been shot at, and you had these photojournalists talking about their love of Nikon and how it's, you know, when they're, you know, crawling through sand with the troops, this is the stuff they use.
Mike (07:57.484) Wow.
Allen Adamson (08:19.262) And we played this video at the start of our pitch, and I still have it. And there were goosebumps in the room. The Nikon clients were crying. And it didn't really matter what else we said, because somehow we had gotten to the front line. We had been in the Hummer. We talked to five, you know, New York Times, other global reporters, and they all had Nikons, and they were talking about it takes a licking and keeps on ticking, which is a nice thing. Anyway, so.
Mike (08:23.117) That'd be amazing.
Yeah.
There would be.
No.
Mike (08:46.027) Well...
Allen Adamson (08:48.198) do something surprising. Because if you just do everything average, if the PowerPoint slides don't have typo and everyone gets up and presents, you'll tie on everything. But you have to figure out what can you win on? You don't have to necessarily get a satellite hookup and get more photographers. But figure out before you go in, what's going to be, what are we going to focus on the one thing that's going to start the conversation? You should talk to Mike's agency because
they are, they did this. And it's right, right.
Mike (09:18.229) Exactly. Because being a great second or third is irrelevant and many agencies are great seconds or thirds. As a procurement person said to me a few months ago, we were talking about agency selection, he said there was nothing wrong with what they did. It was fine. They answered all the questions. It was fine. But they didn't win because they didn't have a standout creative idea. They didn't have breakthrough thinking.
They weren't thought leaders. And yes, we've picked the other agency.
Allen Adamson (09:53.978) And the other is less is more. You know, there's this tendency, because I put big pitches together, so we're going to give the media person 10 minutes. We're going to give the researcher five minutes, the planner two. And all of a sudden, everyone gets, and it's a committee. And you try to fit everyone in because you want to show a team. You want to show that we can do everything from making the lemonade to, you know. And invariably, then you end up with, you know, and now 45 seconds from Debbie. And now, you know, nine.
And of course, everyone goes long. And even if they only have three slides. And so while I'll throw this toe non-secret out, one of my favorite David Ogilvy quotes was search all the squares and town parks and you'll find no statues to committees and lots of big pitches get committeeized because everyone in management, what are you doing on this pitch? How are we going to win this? And lots of back. And so there is, oh, we'll do that too.
Mike (10:25.445) Absolutely correct. Yeah.
Allen Adamson (10:53.294) And there's a tendency to say yes, because no one wants to say no to the CEO for saying let's throw in this idea. But at the end, a ruthless editor who can say no, this is a TV show or presentation, this is a production. And if we have 10 actors each on stage, they're not gonna get to know any of them. So how do we, again, it's focus and less is more.
Mike (10:59.062) Exactly.
Mike (11:20.993) I mean, interestingly, you'll see it, you talked about movies at the beginning. You see it in films, you know, as a family we watch all sorts of films. You can tell, you can tell the standout films. They have, yes, a great storyline, yes, great characters, yes, the story arc, of course, but they have something which takes you by surprise. And it makes you remember that particular film, like driving a car out of a 40 story building in Fast and Furious. It stood out.
Allen Adamson (11:48.79) Right.
Mike (11:51.181) You can't forget it. The Spider-Man films, same thing. So I can see that.
Allen Adamson (11:56.702) And so, and so, and then, you know, realizing that...
Allen Adamson (12:05.191) it's hard to do, you know, and at the end of the day, what happens on most pitches is everyone works, and you get the, there's only a day to rehearse it or an hour, and you know, most of the time you should flip it on its head, you know, get to a working deck a week in advance, a week and a half, rehearse it and find out there's too much content, there's not enough, and then, you know, keep on rehearsing it until you're ready to open on Broadway.
Mike (12:14.21) Yeah.
Allen Adamson (12:32.638) as opposed to, you know, with technology, oh, let's add this slide in. There's a tendency to, on the way from the airport to the client or before the Zoom call, you know, everyone is still, you know, trying to get, you know, and putting everything in words and the basics of people, you know, have information overload. And if you try to cram everything you can do, it's like when people look for a job, you know, I worked here, I did this, I got promoted, I drove.
Mike (12:37.461) Exactly.
Allen Adamson (13:00.47) You know, they feel that more is more, but in pitching, more is not more.
Mike (13:03.064) Exactly.
Definitely not. I had a meeting, well, it was XKPMG. For me, famous kind of event happened with a brilliant, talented partner called Katan. We were building a pitch for a client. It was a big pitch, big piece of work. I have five consultants. We were working through the night. We kept changing the storyline. Then about a day before the pitch, I said to Katan,
If the meeting got called in the next five minutes and we had no slides for you, we only have one slide, would you knock it out the park? He said, yeah, Mike, I would. Because he was talented, he'd gone through the materials. I said, Katan, you don't need a hundred slides from me. The client won't engage with them anyway. You can walk in the room because he was that talented, hold the room and inspire the client and challenge their thinking with one or two slides.
Allen Adamson (13:43.565) Mm-hmm.
Allen Adamson (14:01.422) All right.
Mike (14:03.594) Same thing.
Allen Adamson (14:06.278) And this notion that, you know, clients feed into this because they say in the RFP, here are the 10 things we want to know. Do you have an office in quality and poor? Yeah, but trying to get to the client early and say, look, you're asking these things, you know, what's the most important? And they'll say everything's important. But even on the pitch design, starting the process as we just talked about, you know, asking everyone.
Mike (14:12.653) Absolutely. Yeah.
Allen Adamson (14:33.438) at the end of this presentation, what one sentence do you want a client to say? And making sure we know what success looks like. Wow. You know, the team was great or they really understood media or had insights, but it can't be 10 things. It can't be the Nyquil, 9-time stuff he knows, you know, and that's hard to do, which means it takes a lot of rehearsal and a lot of effort. Um, um, and you need a great.
You need a great leader of the pitch to say no. Before it's too late.
Mike (15:06.393) Exactly. I think the only thing that I'd add, Alan, is having a standout idea is essential. That's the differentiation. But if you haven't answered all the questions and you haven't been diligent and you haven't gone through the RFP or the pitch in detail, you still may not win. A standout idea on its own, but a very poor put-together pitch. Yeah. Exactly.
Allen Adamson (15:26.53) Right. It's pretty distracting. You have to say, here are all the things we've done. But before we take you through these 15 analysis and the customer research we did, we wanna start here because it's something we want to get your feedback.
Mike (15:39.23) Exactly.
Mike (15:43.553) Yeah. And so something unscripted, Alan, I'll see how this goes. Um, can you remember when you've been pitching or been pitched to something that really stood out, you didn't, you don't have to give the brand or, uh, but did anything kind of stand out in your long career of working in branding where you went, wow, that was amazing.
Allen Adamson (16:05.954) I was leading an agency search for a large B2B company and the big players came in. And a lot of them did a lot of theatrical stuff nicely when we went to visit the agency for the first briefing, there were balloons and not quite marching bands, but all the agencies came out and, you know, yeah, we're all excited. And, you know, a piece of that was a good first act.
Mike (16:23.732) No, no, but yeah.
Allen Adamson (16:34.02) Um...
Allen Adamson (16:39.318) doing something different than the 1200 PowerPoint slides. You know, and, you know, whether it's a, we did a mock idea for you or we did a poster in a room and get everyone up and talk about what the new store design could look like, or we showed this idea to some customers, here's what they said, what do you think? You know, getting out of the notion that if you have,
Mike (16:47.043) Yep.
Allen Adamson (17:07.382) 58 minutes, everyone's got to be talking. And if you don't have 58 slides, you're dead. But trying to go into this to create an experience for them other than sit quietly, don't ask any questions, and we're going to tell you more than you want to know.
Mike (17:24.233) Exactly. So another example of mine that brings to mind for me, we used to do these things called CEO rooms. And what that was, was it was a big room and a conference room. We'd take all of the furniture out. So it would be a room with just walls, ideally a window if we could. And we'd have three walls, brown paper, and we'd have like 50 slides on one wall. So wall one was, this is the current situation.
Wall two is this is what the future could look like and here's what the competitors are doing. And wall three is this is how you could become even greater than you are. So it's a very simple three wall story. And the reason we put, and each wall had like 50 slides on it. And you say, well, that goes against what we just said. Why would you need 150 slides? In the middle of each wall was a very large A1 piece of paper with something on it, something big, a big idea, a big thought.
And then around it was all the evidence. And when we walk CEOs from kind of Fortune 500 companies around those kind of rooms, what happened was the partner would lead it. The conversation became very organic. You'd focus on the big A1 picture and then they'd go off in different directions. And we'd point to different slides and they'd get their pen and they'd scrub things out and they'd write comments and they'd engage. So we call it putting the fingerprints.
the client's fingerprints on the materials. And that pitch process was brilliant, highly interactive.
Allen Adamson (18:56.71) Yeah, yeah, and we've done stuff like that. And I agree that's, you know, because when you think about how people, kids learn in school, they can learn in the big lecture room where somebody's up there just talking at them, or they can learn in the lab. And if you can create more of a lab where people are walking through, and it's, you can touch it, and you can scribble and you can, you know, you'll get more engagement. And ultimately, if there's anything that's a predictor of a
Mike (19:11.172) Yes.
Correct.
Allen Adamson (19:25.662) if you win or lose is engagement. If the client is sitting there like a sack of potatoes, it doesn't matter, you know, if they go, yes, no questions, nice job, Alan, thanks for coming in. You don't have to wait for the agency to call back and say, you know, you're really smart and you're really good and thanks for doing the homework, but we've just gone with Mike and we'll keep it better fit.
Mike (19:30.497) Yes.
Mike (19:35.607) Exactly.
Mike (19:45.561) Exactly. He just had something a bit different, Alan, but thanks, please come back next year and try again. So next question, I'm conscious of your time. So during the pitch process, one of the key things on a client's mind is what would it be like working with you? So how do you think agencies can bring their kind of unique brand experience to life?
Allen Adamson (19:52.774) Right, and do the same thing again. Yeah, exactly.
Mike (20:13.005) during the pitch process, right from the first contact through to being hopefully the selected agency. So that kind of what would it like to work with you?
Allen Adamson (20:23.65) Well, I certainly think that your last story about, you know, creating an experience, a workshop, you know, getting away from us telling you how smart we are to do something. Because no matter how good a presenter you are, you never get a feeling for what it's like to work with Mike or Alan. You just say they're pretty good presenters. What you want to know is, you know, if Alan says blue is better than red and you say, no, I think it's different. How does that conversation go?
Mike (20:39.893) No, exactly. Yeah.
Mike (20:50.917) That's right.
Allen Adamson (20:51.506) Do they just roll over? Do they sit with them? Why do you think that? So, you know, job one is to, how do you get a conversation going in the room? And I often start lots of my pitch meetings, the more successful ones. And if there were, you can never, you can do everything right and still lose as you know, a lot of times, is, yeah, is starting off with questions and saying, all right, we've just finished this presentation. We have a room here full of stuff.
Mike (21:09.473) Yep, absolutely. I have many times, yeah. Ha ha ha.
Allen Adamson (21:19.51) You know, what do you need to know to make this decision? What concerns do you have us about us? Um, from what you've read, um, what, what makes you nervous about us? What? And, and, you know, here's, here's our agenda. We have these 10 items we can cover. We can talk about how we got to the insight. We can talk about how we done the homework, how we, you know, what we would do. What are the alternatives? Which one of these do you want to go through with any? Um, and, um,
So that's one. And the other is how to bring the team to life because the tendency is to do the miserable thing I did at the beginning of this podcast. Everyone has their bio. I went to school here. I learned to... But everyone does it sequentially and everyone presents the bio. And all of a sudden you have people with the same bio as I worked here, I did this. And...
Mike (22:03.553) It wasn't miserable, Alan. It was very good. It was very good. He he he. Polished.
Allen Adamson (22:14.51) You know, you don't get a sense of who they are. And lately, it's been people putting their dogs in their bio picture or, you know, we did a thing for Goldman Sachs once because they were trying to figure out how to differentiate. And all the partners were so impressive, but they were all the same. They all had the same Ivy League schools, you know, blue chip backgrounds. And so we, you know, we flipped it and said, here are the five people that are going to work on your business, but we're not going to show them to you. Here are their desks.
And you can look at their desk and see one had a dog on it, one had a picture of a boat, one had a vacation picture with the kids. And it was a more intriguing way to bring the team to life as humans, as opposed to, you know, Mike got a B plus in marketing, so he should hire him.
Mike (22:58.137) Yeah.
Mike (23:04.457) Exactly. Correct. Definitely. Absolutely. And I think, I mean, like you, I'm probably, I've got many clients that I've worked with. So I work with for merely a few weeks. I might do some training or some coaching or a bit consulting, but some I might work with for like a year, two years, one I've been working with for seven years. And probably the reason, apart from hopefully adding some value in the conversations I have for the client is
the way I work, my style. You know, I've got a few clients I'm lucky that say, Mike, we just love working with you. We love working with you. You know, there's all sorts of reasons why, but it just works. It's a good fit. And you have to find that out in the pitch process.
Allen Adamson (23:53.71) And the final thing I'll throw in is that you need to be a casting director at the pitch. Because while people in the organization are really competent and they can do great insights and strategy, not everyone is great at talking and presenting. And if they're uncomfortable in that role, nothing is more painful than to watch somebody really smart and successful bumble through a presentation by either reading all the slides or not be, you know. And so it has to be, you know, like a.
Mike (24:06.789) Correct.
Allen Adamson (24:21.922) casting thank you, we'll call you, you have to put people in the room that had that skill. And even if it means saying we can't, because you wanna show the team, but you have to cheat it because this is, you're opening on Broadway, you're not opening in the back room. And you just have to be ruthless. If some of the team then give them really tight roles.
Mike (24:40.654) That's right.
Allen Adamson (24:47.418) or give them no, I hate bringing people no roles because that's the other thing. You're as our whole team and then one person talks for the whole time. But you have to be ruthless again because at the end of presentation or new business is an experience. And if you don't have the right casting, not only from a capability and if the team doesn't get along. The other thing that I failed at a hundred times, I take somebody from the Chicago office, somebody from the San Francisco office and put them together.
Mike (25:02.149) That's right.
Allen Adamson (25:17.046) but they've never worked together. So it's awkward. They get up and down, they do their thing. Yet when you take a team that's already been working great on this piece of business and they've hung out at airports with delayed planes and they've been, you know, all of a sudden the conversation is more fluid and you feel that Mike and Debbie and John, they could be talking about football, but they still get it and they don't mind interrupting each other. So chemistry of the team,
Mike (25:20.581) That's right.
Mike (25:42.789) Exactly.
Allen Adamson (25:47.066) is harder and harder to do the bigger the organization, but it matters.
Mike (25:51.961) Really simple thing, Ellen. So before this recording, we had a pre-record. Every guest on my show, I have a pre-record. Why? Because of that. It's not really about the content. It is, yes, we define the questions. It's more about how are we gonna talk? How do we interact with each other? Are you static? Are you dynamic? Are you funny? Are you dry? Are you serious? I have to know that before we start.
Allen Adamson (26:20.69) Exactly. And the same true, which is about homework. If you can get to your client and get them to come in for a workshop or a prospect or do something with them before the curtain goes up. You know, can we do we have some ideas when I run by you, you know, it does doing homework like that makes a difference because what's right for one client might be completely wrong for a very analytical client who's going to go in there with the agency evaluation and say.
team knowledge five, you know, teamwork. And so you need to know who's evaluating is like the judge that holds up a five. Every judge is going to and most people are scared to call the clients. Well, they just have the RP. No, let's ask them to come in and you tell us. Yeah, right. Right. So the more homework you do, the person that wins the most homework usually wins the pitch to
Mike (26:52.215) Correct.
Mike (26:58.445) That's right.
Mike (27:06.145) Yeah. What's the worst that happens? They say no.
Mike (27:18.017) Yeah, exactly. So final question, Alan, kind of a big picture question, which is, what's the next major disruption for marketing agencies? You're beyond, yes, everyone's talking about AI, of course, and it's important. And if you're not talking about AI, there's something wrong. But what's the next major disruption beyond AI, and how will it affect or how will it benefit clients in terms of marketing agency disruption?
Allen Adamson (27:48.662) You know, I think the agency model is challenged. I lived it for many years for a number of reasons. One, the best people of the agencies are typically already assigned to the most important clients. So when you're going after a new client, you can't take Debbie, you can't take Mike, you can't take Bill, because they're on British Airways, they're on, you know, the BMW. And so you're left with people that are, quote, on the bench, but very good people. But so that's, you're pitching often without your A-team.
Mike (28:07.397) That's right.
Mike (28:17.699) Yep.
Allen Adamson (28:18.082) The second piece is you're pitching with that team's never really worked together. You tend to pull people together. And so for agencies, and then the best people are also the most senior people, because I felt a lot of pressure. Most senior people are really under pressure to not do the project, to pass it down to the junior. So they're available to pitch more business. And you know, so I think there's a challenge that agencies have.
is it's always about winning a pitch. There's no black hole. If you have the right people who understand the industry, who have the expertise, who are keen on doing the assignment, who work together well, you win the pitch. If you have the wrong people who don't work together well and you're taking somebody who's worked in the insurance business for 15 years and saying, you know, use some toothpaste, we're pitching a toothpaste company, you fail.
So finding that talent, there's as much talent on the outside as on the inside. Lately, when I was in the last 10 years, lots of the pitches I was doing at big agencies, we had to use freelancers for half the team because we didn't have a person who understood FinTech well enough. And so I think this whole model is opening up
Allen Adamson (29:46.482) And the second piece is lots of agencies are driven by saying, we need to be hot and edgy and cool. And that's the most important thing. And how can someone over 35 who doesn't live on TikTok add any value? And so you go through the halls of many of these digital, all these agencies, and it's hard to find someone over 40.
Mike (30:01.796) Hahaha.
Allen Adamson (30:13.662) And that's good because it's fresh thinking and innovation. But to succeed, I think, because what to do for communication and positioning and marketing is some facts, but a lot of judgment. Yes, well, you have to be able to see the next trend and the young people are great at seeing the next trend. Alan, you're your father's oldsmobile, let's move on. But you need to say, well, I've seen this movie before. Here's some things.
to think about instead of chasing the latest flash. So I think the biggest challenge is always gonna be about talent. But in today's world, how do you find that talent? Where are they? How do you motivate that talent? And how do you get the best of it?
Mike (31:01.461) And this whole extended workforce idea, I was saying I was talking to a very talented woman called Aviva Wittenberg Cox of the day about the generational challenges that we have and about the kind of, you know, the Q3ers, the 50 to 75 year olds that have left the workforce, but still want to have their brains engaged. And there's an enormous talent pool out there of people, but it's how do you access them in a fractional way?
And I think it is a lost opportunity for many agencies and also for brands to not tap into that talent. I would say that because I'm nearly 60, so I'm bound to say that, but I do think it's true.
Allen Adamson (31:41.586) No, it's a topic that is discussed on lots of venues, because there is ageism. Younger people say, you know, it's great that, Alan, you've done this for more than 10 years, that's great. But, you know, I'm fine, I know what I'm doing. And so, and you're right, you're not gonna get someone who's in that quarter
Mike (32:03.809) Yep, exactly.
Allen Adamson (32:10.862) to the office six days a week, from seven in the morning to 11 at night. But how do you get that talent factored in to balance your offer between understanding current trends, knowing what's hot and new, finding the next edge with a little bit of, I hate to use this word, wisdom and perspective that comes from swinging at three balls and missing and understanding that can happen.
Mike (32:38.901) Yeah, exactly. Alan, it's been amazing having you as a guest. Thank you ever so much. Where can people find out more about you and where can they buy your latest book?
Allen Adamson (32:41.186) So.
Allen Adamson (32:50.706) Well, unfortunately, like everything else, I can buy my latest book anywhere online, Amazon or whatever. And that's, you know, if you ask ChatGBT or Google, Alan.Adamson or AlanAdamson.com or my firm Metaphors, but finding me is thanks to at least a couple years of doing this is not as, not as big a challenge as it used to be.
Mike (32:55.545) Hehehehe
Mike (33:14.873) Exactly. Alan, thank you. It's been a real pleasure.
Allen Adamson (33:18.198) Enjoy talking. Thank you for inviting me.
Mike (33:21.965) Thanks, Alan. Right, let me stop recording.
