The biggest, and I suppose the most lamentable change in the business that's happenened between the time I worked for giant holding company agencies and the time I worked for myself, is that these days, there is seldom an "Agency-of-Record."
Sure, I have long-standing accounts--I had a call earlier today with the client I opened my doors with over five years ago, and another long-time client has just sent me a text with photographs of billboards I wrote. She took in a Las Vegas airport. Her company is holding their annual user conference in Las Vegas and I thank them for the work and for not inviting me.
Regardless of those accounts which I've had for five plus annums, and two or three others, I am constantly pitching new business.
I suppose I'm a little like Vasco DeGama or something. Always looking for new trade routes and spices.
Every once-in-a-while a friend or acquaintance will ring me up and chin-wag with me. Almost invariably they'll ask (many of these calls, while solicitous, are exchanges of business information) "are you working on anything interesting?"
I usually brush that one off like a seasoned comedian handles a heckler, but other times I handle it like this. "When I grew up in advertising, say in the 80s and 90s, the two great advertising success stories were an overnight delivery service and the Nynex yellow pages. You could barely ask for more prosaic accounts than that."
Though my inquisitors are silent, I can hear their eye rolling. So, I'll continue, so as to avoid dead air. "My job is to make things interesting. To find what's interesting in them. To find what makes them special. Important to people."
In the five years since I opened the doors of GeorgeCo., LLC, a Delaware Company, I've probably won 50-75 new assignments. Roughly one a month or so.
I've only been asked to show sample-creative once--and I pulled out of that pitch. Because at this point in my life, if a client doesn't know who I am and what GeorgeCo. does, there's a pretty good chance they're not right for me and I'm not right for them.
After all, I show my thinking and my work every day. In this space (which reaches thousands of the top people in our industry) and in those dopey ads I do in an effort to keep my agency top-of-mind.
Also, I speak to people.
As myself. Not some bespoke new-business-atron. As myself. Nuttiness and all.
I don't talk to potential clients about the latest sebum-filled pustule of popular culture or the latest ugly crassness that's sweeping social media. I talk to them about what's going on in the world. I talk to them about how people think. I talk to them about historical precedent and the world we're living in. You know, those things Bernbach called "simple, timeless human truths." Not the latest craze or spasm.
Below are some of the books I've read over the last six months. I can't say "this one got me a $70,000 assignment," or "this helped me impress so-and-so." But I can say, that these are the things that make me me.
And it's me I bring to these phone calls when I try to answer a prospective clients' question: "How can you help me? Why should I choose you?"
I get that a lot.
And yes, H, my business manager, L, my wife, if she's within hearing, and even Sparkle, my thirteen-month-old golden retriever might sigh and despair when they hear me start my answer by talking about neolithic axes and trophic food supplies. But more often than not I'm able to bring things around and find a relevance and even, if I'm lucky, a universality in what I'm reading to the world we're living in.
In any event, I win a lot more than I lose. At least so far.
What's more, I like reading. And that should count for something.
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