Agency Stories: The Night I Slept On The Floor
The night I slept on the floor ....oh boy. I don't like talking about this one very much, but I'm pretty sure it still goes on to this day in corporate America. When I was in advertising in Chicago and New York, campaigns were always mismanaged. We would have a team leader and a secondary team leader, and a job coordinator whose job was to make sure we were doing our jobs. And then there was an owner of the company who would come around, stick his nose into the middle of the project, and had to be brought up to speed, and then he would take it off and pretend like we didn't exist.

With all this confusion, it was only a matter of time before someone dropped the ball, and they did. The important tasks always piled up at the last minute, what we called the 11th hour, and we’d have to scramble to finish the project—whether it was a website, a CD-ROM, or a presentation. Working under these conditions was tough. It always made me laugh that management thought ordering pizza and lots of coffee would fix everything.
  

But it’s hard to think straight when you’re full of pizza and caffeine. As the hours dragged on, someone would eventually announce we were pulling an all-nighter, which meant sleeping in the office. The office isn’t a great place to spend the night, but I’ve done it at least twice, and it always felt strange.

This all happened because of poor project management, usually with middle management trying to cover themselves. People were often on the verge of being fired or just walking out.

Meanwhile, the clients had no idea what was going on, including the real state of their project. The work was either about to fall apart, or the agency itself was close to collapsing. Usually, it came down to one or two people who actually knew their jobs and saved the project. Most of the team didn’t contribute much at all.

 

The Office Goes Silent - Out Go The Lights

The main lighting grid usually went off around 11:00, so the building's lights would go out. Our only sense of illumination was the desktop lamps, our cube stations, and our computer screens. You tried to get comfortable in an office with no bed, no couch, no blankets, or pillow. It is very difficult to do. Sometimes I would grab my jacket out of the closet, ball it up, and try to sleep under the break room table with the lights out for a few hours.

It’s a strange feeling—being in the office at 3:00 in the morning can feel really lonely. Sometimes you’d hear the heating or HVAC systems kick on. By 5:00 a.m., people would get up, return to their desks, and try to finish more work before the 9:00 a.m. deadline.

I always found it funny that our managers would leave to get a good night’s sleep.

The money behind these projects is huge, but, of course, we never really saw any of it because it went to the agency's owners. At this point, we're just trying to save our jobs.

 

  
How Does Work Life Become This Terrible?

how does digital marketing an advertising get to be so horrible? online marketing agencies get to be this horrible because of one simple reason and that is that no one person knows all the positions to get the job done. in other words the copywriters were kept away when the programmers and the programs were kept away from the salespeople and the digital artist were considered grunts who just were paid to do what they were told. the project manager was too busy eating lunch with a sales people and making excuses to never be present. so nobody really knew what the job was entirely and a lot of people were kept in the dark.

When I was in New York, I slept in a digital ad agency with no windows. We had a big pharmaceutical client, and they didn’t think twice about making us sleep on the floor to finish a project. I remember going downstairs for breakfast—they were going to feed us. I hadn’t even seen half the people working on the project until that morning. I also remember a heavyset man trying to smooth things over by serving us big trays of hot bacon and powdered eggs.

That’s when I knew I wanted to quit.

So I decided to learn every role in an ad agency. That meant sales, graphics, copywriting, programming, managing full projects, and handling a client’s long list of demands. None of these roles were easy—I had to spend time learning how to program and create content to make it all work.
Creating THE WIN - And Why I Did It
What’s interesting is that I took copywriting further than anyone else at any agency I worked for. I became a wordsmith, writing sales copy that drove sales and captivated readers.

When I started my company, The Win, I made it a point to cut out all the unnecessary parts. I got rid of extra middle management, underachievers, time-wasters, and office martyrs.

I bought dozens of books from advertising and marketing greats like David Ogilvy, Dan Kennedy, and Seth Godin. I also went further, learning about the psychology and even the neuroscience behind the customer-client relationship.

I enjoy debating what makes a good client-campaign relationship. The answers I hear from my competitors are often amusing. They insist on effective online communication and avoid one-on-one calls or meetings by adding another screen. These extra steps make it harder to connect and leave a strong impression. You need to break that barrier quickly, and I always say it’s important to take the conversation offline as soon as possible.
I don’t believe in relying on big Facebook groups or Google-owned platforms that could be shut down overnight. Any third-party source that could take away your client base is a disaster and should be avoided. I’ll also say that your sales will match the number of conversations you start each week.

Every client and prospect has their own schedule and won’t say yes exactly when you expect. Many factors come into play, and your prospect is always checking out your company while considering offers from other agencies.

Using your own voice and sharing your past wins, along with testimonials, is key. This is where many companies fail—not just ours, but also the ones we coach. You have to move beyond textbook thinking and really understand the mechanics of making a sale.

 

  
It’s funny I mention sales, because here’s a big question: Can you actually sell? Can you write copy that makes a sale happen? Many of my clients can’t do either, and a lot of them don’t even know what copywriting is. Writing effective sales copy is like having a salesperson on the page. It needs all the right hooks to pull on people’s emotions, and it has to be well written.

I don’t believe in just waiting for the phone to ring. Most of the time, I make things happen by reaching out first. Then I start a drip campaign or share information about my company and what we can do.

The truth is, selling scares most people. It’s right up there with public speaking and making cold calls. But your sales are waiting for you on the other side of that fear.

In Closing

Not many people in agencies—or those who call themselves agency people—have had these experiences. Chances are, they’re so new to advertising that all they talk about is AI. Be wary of these overnight so-called millionaires. I’ve never heard of them, and they don’t have the 20 years of experience I do. I actually started in 1989, learning about sales copy in college. I was fascinated by it, especially since some copywriters made more than doctors. That’s a pretty interesting thought.

I don't hold stock in a lot of these new overnight marketing gurus that I've never heard of. Quite a few of them have entered themselves into the millionaire status, but I have never seen them online, and I never heard of them, and even worse, I can Google one of their companies and not come up with anything on the SERPs, (search engine result pages)

Be careful when choosing your next agency.

Ted Cantu
THE WIN