Mark Schnurman was part of a webcast panel discussion hosted by Ed Silverman of Pharmalot. The panel discussed the navigating the procurement process for pharmaceutical advertising pitches.

The panelists came from a variety of backgrounds giving the audience a look at procurement from different points of view. Other panelists included Michael Thyen, Director, Marketing & Sales Global Procurement, Eli Lilly and Deborah Dick-Rath, Senior Vice President, Healthcare Practice Leader, FactorTG.

Issues covered during the webcast included:
• How big a vote should procurement get in the decision making process?
• When should procurement get involved and what should their role be?
• What should procurement tell an agency before the pitch?

Click here to view the webcast.

Mark Schnurman is now on Twitter!  @markschnurman

Based on the success of the “Why Agencies Win” workshop at the AAAA Transformation 2011 conference and the amount of buzz the workshop created on Twitter, Mark has joined the twitterverse.

The goal is to provide a resource to agency executives and new business directors addressing issues facing our industry.  “The amount of immediately useful content on Twitter is fantastic and I hope to contribute to the conversation” says Mark.

Follow Mark at click here

Mark Schnurman’s presentation “Why Agencies Win” at the 4As Transformation 2011 Conference in Austin, Texas generated nearly 50 tweets from the packed house.  Chairs needed to be added to accommodate the overflow crowd.   The question and answer session spilled over into cocktail hour.  Nothing says a workshop is productive like making people late for cocktail hour!

“It was a thrill to get so much positive feedback.  New business, regardless of the economy is always a hot topic” say Mark.

Chris Yeh, author of the Agency Collaboration blog, posted his notes from Mark’s Why Agencies Win Presentation at 4As Transformation 2011 conference in Austin, TX.

http://agencycollaboration.com/2011/03/08/why-agencies-win-mark-schnurman/

The Agency Collaboration blog focuses on all the issues that agencies face when it comes to collaboration.  This includes inter-agency, intra-agency, and agency-client collaboration, as well as the technologies agencies use to meet their collaboration needs.

Pam Bloore is now part of the blogosphere!

Pam has decided to share her expertise on overcoming nervousness with her new blog.  Pam has always been passionate about helping people become more comfortable presenting and the blog is a perfect venue for her to talk to a larger audience.

Follow Pam’s blog here http://tipsfornervouspresenters.blogspot.com/

Mark Schnurman has been asked to speak at the upcoming 4As Conference scheduled for March 2011 in Austin, Texas.  Mark will be speaking about the core skills and habits that lead to agency new business pitch wins.

Sharing the stage with Mark reads like a who’s who in advertising list.  Other presenters include:

John Adams                 CEO – The Martin Agency
Duff Stewart                President and CEO – GSD&M
Chuck Porter               Chairman – Crispin Porter + Bugosky
Dave Lubeck                EVP Director of Client Services – Bernstein Rein
Eric Mower                 Chairman/CEO – Eric Mower and Associates
Sharon Napier             President and CEO – partners + napier
Ignacio Oreamuno      President – GiantHydra
Miles Young                CEO – Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide

4As stages on a terrific conference and this year’s gathering should be no exception.  With the myriad of challenges facing the economy and the advertising industry, this year’s event should be very well attended.  To read more about the conference, click here.

The following article entitled Clear all Hurdles to Win the Pitch  ran in Med Ad News’ June 2010 issue.  Mark Schnurman writes a monthly column entitled Pitch Therapy for Med Ad News about pitching new business.  The article also appeared on Mark’s Pitch Therapy blog which can be found at:http://www.pitchtherapy.blogspot.com/

During the pitch process, clients are not just looking for the agency they should hire. More importantly, they are looking at the agencies they should not hire. An agency needs to clear a number of hurdles in order to win the business. Some of the hurdles are obvious: creative, strategy, capabilities. But some of the hurdles are more difficult to see coming: charisma, likability, chemistry.

First let’s take a look at the obvious hurdles. When it comes to creative, clients are not only looking for good creative (and you can define good however you like), but they are looking very closely to make sure that the creative is on strategy. Read more

April brings the yearly celebration of excellence in healthcare advertising.  As in years past, Filament clients are well represented.  2010 marks the ninth year in a row that at least one Filament client has been nominated for Agency of the Year.

Filament clients have been nominated in a number of categories including:

Agency of the year Categories I and III
Most admired
Best Medical Device Campaign
Best Consumer Advertising Campaign
Best Self Promotion Campaign
Best Interactive Physician Campaign
Heart Award
Vision Award

Congratulations to all of our clients on a great year!

4As has asked Filament to conduct their Presenting and Selling Creative Work to Clients workshop in New York City, Minneapolis, Raleigh and Rochester, all within the next few months.   The workshop has been so well received that 4As is stepping up the number of times the workshop is offered.

Here is a quick overview of the workshop.
Presenting creative work to clients or prospects is not as much about presentation skills as it about selling skills. Clients need to be transformed from “creative evaluators” to “creative champions.”  If your clients are discussing the color and font, they are still in creative evaluator mode and this workshop will help you to turn clients into champions of your creative work instead of killers of great ideas.

This all day workshop, conducted by Brian Schnurman of Filament, Inc., explores how to turn creative staff from presenters of work to proponents of work, and how to sell the big idea instead of the details.read more