By George M Callanan, Jr., President
There are many elements and considerations that go into a great
advertising campaign. The professional who develops the campaign has
to think in terms of the “Big Four,” which are: the offer, the
delivery system or media, the frequency of the commercial, and last
but not least, the creative presentation.
In many respects, “the offer” is the most important and here is why:
People— or should I say buyers— have been trained to look at
products or services as a commodity. This can be attributed to the
great recession, dollar store retailers and the Internet, which has
presented better offers than you can find through traditional media or
at bricks and mortar retail locations.
These days everyone is confronted with a multitude of delivery system
or media options, should we send an email blast, do a TV commercial,
do a banner ad, run a radio spot, utilize outdoor advertising, run an
ad in a magazine or in the newspaper, or consider various other media
to run our ad. The bottom line is the offer must be affordable enough
to separate you from your commodity competitors. For example. Two for
one deals, 25% or more off will get the buyers attention. Now, if you
ran two ads, one in the newspaper illustrating a product sale for two
days where you get 40% off, but on Facebook your ad stated 10% off
which ad will drive more people to buy? The newspaper ad will.
However, if you flop the media, the Facebook offer is 40% off and
newspaper 10% off. The Facebook ad will produce greater results.
Older people grew up with TV, radio, magazines and newspaper. Younger
people are growing up with mobile ads, social media and digital
advertising. However, when an offer is an outstanding deal, the word
gets around. Either the young tell the old or the old tell the young.
The delivery system or media selection process is controlled by the
budget and the target audience. No one medium should take the entire
budget. Whichever media has the programming and audience that
represents the closest match to the people who will buy is where you
should invest. Testing of media is OK, some will produce and some will
fail. Adjust the media according to where you get the most leads and
the most results with the most sales being paramount.
Frequency of the message in the ad or the commercial is absolutely key
to the success of the campaign. A great ad that runs infrequently is
not talked about. A bad ad that runs a lot is talked about as being bad.
The creative presentation must aim for excellence. People remember
clever ads. Some of the best commercials of all time utilize one or
more of these strategies: humor, sex, testimonial, children, animals,
fear, technological superiority and the customer as king or queen.
So, when you consider your next campaign, remember the Big Four in
Marketing Communications. Good luck and we hope you move a whole lotta
product.