This is an abridged version of a talk Creative Resources President Gerry Tabio gave at the recent IBO conference. To learn more about these concepts, contact Gerry Tabio, gerrytabio@creativeresourcesgroup.com.
At Creative Resources, we have developed a system we call Lift to give media companies data-driven advice to help them take more control over the growth they create. The Lift system consists of three disciplines:
Discipline #1: Focus on the Accounts that Produce the Greatest Growth
The single biggest driver of revenue growth in 2025, is the degree to which you preserve the revenue from your 2024 Key Accounts.
The second biggest contributor to your growth is how many of your small clients and your non-clients you successfully grow large enough to become New Key Accounts by the end of this year.
Small accounts rarely contribute to long-term growth, as most of them churn before they can make a meaningful impact.
Armed with this knowledge, there are two actions you can take right now.
- Go back to your 2024 list of active clients and identify the top 25%. That group of accounts becomes your Key Account Portfolio and you need to manage it like you would a mutual fund. Every month, compare the 2025 year-to-date spending against the same period last year. Your job is to bring back as much of that aggregate revenue as possible. Don’t let the attrition exceed 13%, or you will find it almost impossible to grow your total revenue over last year.
- Pivot away from chasing new business for its own sake and commit to a Target Account effort. Set a minimum Target Account dollar goal that is at least 30% higher than your smallest Key Account and work with your sellers to find smaller clients that have higher spending potential. You need to grow as many small clients to that goal as possible.
Discipline #2: Take a Proactive Sales Approach
You will be tempted to try to grow your Key and Target Accounts by showing them your billboards and your open locations. But that’s not where the big potential for growth is.
The potential of your business expands when you approach it from the point of view of the customer’s priorities for their company. It shrinks when you approach it from the point of view of what you can sell them. Your salespeople need to explore what their clients are attempting to do with their marketing without your company’s help.
One powerful way to reframe the conversations with your Key and Target Accounts is to introduce them to the 95/5 Rule which was discovered by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. The 95-5 Rule states that, at any given moment, only 5% of the potential customers for any of your clients are in the market to buy their products. The other 95% are not ready to make a purchase and we don’t know when they are going to be.
One action you can take right now is to teach this important rule to your clients and frame their marketing priorities in these terms. Explain to them that the way to communicate with the 5% that are in the market is different from the way to communicate with the 95% that are not. Remind them that your job, as their partner, is to get them remembered so that when people decide to make a purchase in their category, they will be chosen.
Clients who understand the 95/5 Rule become more open to consistent, long-term messaging. That, in turn, leads to longer commitments and less attrition from your Key Accounts. Everyone wins.
Discipline #3: Creative Consistency
Creative consistency helps your clients create and refresh long-term memories.
When we studied the great creative campaigns like the Snickers’ You’re Not You When You’re Hungry and Allstate’s Mayhem, we noticed that they always contain three ingredients:
- A name, which gives the campaign longevity and keeps the creative messaging consistent.
- Media tools with broad reach to get the message out to as many people who could buy their category as possible.
- Creative messaging that consistently lives up to the campaign’s name.
Creative Campaigns could be Originals or Extensions
If a client does not have a current creative campaign they use consistently, you have a golden opportunity to develop one for them that includes all three required ingredients.
If they already have a creative campaign that they are happy with, you can make it even more effective by extending it. Start by giving their current campaign a name based on their current creative. Then, incorporate your outdoor company’s tools and develop creative messaging that is consistent with the name.
To take control of your ability to grow your revenue, focus on the accounts that can create growth, be proactive, understand the client from a marketing point of view and bring them creative campaigns that will help them be remembered.
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