Golden Rules and Advice

There are three key rules for successful advertising. First, good advertising should be self-evident. Agencies should not have to “sell” their campaigns to their clients. When an agency does its job on behalf of a client, the client says, “You have helped us find ourselves. Now let’s go to market with that.”

Second, have respect for the audience. While we are here to entertain and engage, we are foremost here to be respectful of the people whose time we are taking and to whom we are trying to sell something.

Third, bring it back to business. We are in an industry that should help build the businesses of our clients. We are fortunate to be in a fun industry, but it is still about business. It is time that our industry brought it back to business. Beyond marketing and communications, we are in the business of building businesses.

One final piece of advice: Think about something but don’t over think it. If you feel in your gut that something is the right thing to do, don’t over think it. You are going to waste time. If you really believe something is right, do it. For all the good thinking in our world and all the good research, at some point you have to have enough experience under your belt, enough conviction and enough knowledge to just make a decision to do something and do it well.

After a successful career in several of the region’s most well-known agencies, including BBDO and Ingalls, Paul Allen followed his entrepreneurial instincts and founded Allen & Gerritsen. As CEO, he is responsible for the overall management of the $150+ million shop and strategic vision of the business.

Over a decade ago, Allen recognized the value of partnering with clients in high performance industries. His vision gave birth to A&G’s proprietary practice that redefines companies’ relationships with their customers to the greatest advantage. A&G’s success is based on combining this proprietary strategic practice with a nationally recognized creative product.

Allen is a recognized industry innovator. He has published a series of articles in publications such as Knowledge Management, B2B, The Business to Business Marketer, DM News, The Advertiser, and Marketing Computers.

Allen is chairman of long-range strategic planning for the Boston Ad Club.

He grew up in Norwood, MA, and has a degree in economics from Lafayette College. When he’s not traveling around the world for agency clients, he sails his boat “Pinneped” around the coast of Maine.