 | Win Without Pitching is the business development consulting firm for ad agencies and design firms that believe there is a better way to build a marketing communication agency. |
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Blair Enns blogs about agency business development, free pitching and occasionally, life in Kaslo.
Online Positioning Program | 20 July 2010 If you were to hire me to help you reposition your firm I would walk you through seven steps. These seven steps are now captured in an online positioning program that you can do yourself, in seven lessons...  Topics: Positioning If Win Without Pitching Made Gin... | 10 June 2009 ...we would make Hendrick's Gin.
Hendrick's infuses cucumber and rose petal into their gin, in addition to some of the more traditional botanical. Everything about the gin, it's packaging and all aspects of the company's communication, is about setting itself apart, telling prospects It's an odd, sophisticated taste - you probably won't like it... Topics: Positioning, Objections Will Low-Affiliation People Rule the Future? | 20 May 2009Reading about Peak Oil this morning - the idea that global oil production will soon forever outstrip demand, and thinking of the implications for the way business will be conducted, if the peak oil predictions come to be.
In a world where travel is prohibitively expensive, business models will have to change. Some people will find it easier than others to adapt... Topics: Personnel Mistakes in Positioning Language | 16 April 2009There's a standard set of words that a lot of undifferentiated firms use to try describe how they're different and why they should be hired. I've commented on terms like full service, strategic, responsive and others ad nauseum over the years (and I'll comment on them so more in next week's newsletter, Seven Words You Can't Say in Business Development) but there's one phrase I've heard over and over but never really saw a pattern of use until recently.
The phrase is, "We get it." Topics: Positioning On Tactics & Strategy | 24 March 2009
1. Differs vastly from individual to individual 2. Is rarer than I previous thought 3. Is rooted in our hard-wiring and not our experiences
For years I've heard numerous agency principals dismiss their competition with the line, 'They don't do strategy.' I long ago developed a reflex to this statement in the form of the question, 'What is strategy?' While there's been little consistency in the answers I've received there has been almost universal consistency in the long pause that precedes the answer. The pause tells me that we haven't spent much time contemplating this oft-used word... Language or Strategy? | 5 February 2009Without naming names I'm going to re-post here some text from an email exchange with a client on the subject of positioning. At some point he asks the question, "Am I just a graphic designer?"
My slightly edited response... 2009 Branding Challenge | 2 January 2009I have a challenge for you regarding the B-word (Brand), and as it is the first working day of the new year, allow me to frame it as a New Year's Resolution that you might consider to taking on.
There are two levels to this resolution; choose the one that you think you're up to: The Jedi Master Challenge or the Padawan Learner Challenge... More Agency Spoofs | 28 April 2008
Try following the Yellow Brick Road and hope you're not reading your own web copy. :) I especially like the client quotes and the trademarked process, Brand Mogic. Returning to the Scene of the Crime | 21 February 2008
My message went over well enough (although I got poor marks for my rusty and wooden style!) that I was invited back two years later. David Baker has now ended his involvement with the conference that he co-founded, but the event is soldiering on (now an annual event again after two stints as a biannual) in Austin the weekend of September 25th, 2008. I've been invited back this year to do the opening keynote, giving me a rare opportunity to take back some of the things I said five years ago.
But will I? Is This Your Firm? | 19 October 2007
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