Now that TVLowCost is open in Toronto, along with six other countries in the network, the interest in our concept of advertising is growing on this side of the Atlantic. One of the first questions posed to me was, “Are you going to be the pirates of the advertising world?” What an interesting way of looking at us.
If this is from the perspective of the other agencies out there, yes we will be pirates! We are taking clients from them in a way that they see as being outside of the accepted “pitch and dine philosophy” of new business. A method they have so long used to bait and hook in order to eventually lock clients into their web of over-priced services.
For TVLowCost, the way of doing business does not depend on an AOR contract, we will not become the “Agency”, rather we will develop and execute television commercials, testing everyone for effectiveness, planning and buying media on the basis of highest effectiveness in terms of immediate sales growth and we will never compete in pitches. We will not operate the same as the old guard of top-heavy, over-staffed and for the most part inefficient agency players today. Do they like this? No! But then again we are pirates.
Our clients, over 50 and counting in the last two years, not only respect the fact that we do business in order to make more money for them, they in turn come back to us and this makes us more profitable. And as a pirate, we do not see profit as a dirty word. We will never play down the fact that growth is just as important to TVLowCost as it is to our clients. However, our model depends on perfect executions and complete customer satisfaction in all we do. We must be perfect because it is the only way for us to build a long-term relationships with our clients. And of the 50, we are still making commercials for 48 – not a bad figure for a bunch of pirates.
So I guess we will be pirates in the eyes of the other agencies until they begin to understand that their way of doing business is open to attack. But then if you’re on a floundering, over-crewed, directionless yacht with lavish parties in the staterooms(no longer on the deck, in the open), adrift in an ever faster current, taking you ever farther from the vital shipping lanes, what else could we be?
And did I mention that this question came from an employee of another agency?
