Why not let the station do your low budget ad? After all their creative and production comes FREE!
First, let’s get one thing straight. Nothing is for free…especially in advertising! If it is free, there are probably a hundred reasons not to get involved.
Right now there are a ton of deals being offered by the stations for air buys and they’re desperate to get your money. The offers may range from 2x the frequency of your buy up to and including free production of the ad. I’ll say it again…you get what you pay for!
Why?
We all know the kind of quality ads the stations normally produce, not exactly the cutting edge, cut through the clutter kind of stuff. If you are there because you get double the exposure ask yourself if it is good enough that you’d want to see that commercial twice as many time as normal.
If all you have to talk about is price, and nothing’ but price…you should be doing your ads at the local station! But, for some reason I think about 90% of the advertisers out there doing ads with the station have something more than price to offer…but it’s not coming through!
If your attitude is “I don’t care what it looks like, as long as it’s on air because if I’m on air, I’m top of mind…good or bad!”. Remember, if you buy into the station producing your ad, you are more than likely locked into “that” station for the rest of your buys with that ad. Most will not release the ad to another station, especially if they gave you a discount (Free) to get it done! This now leaves you with having to go through production again if you want to buy airtime somewhere else.
So what’s the solution? The alternative to a station produced ad is using a creative production film/video company to produce your ad. Until recently the costs for doing so where very expensive due to the cost of cameras and editing facilities. Well, times have changed. With the advancements in cameras and computers within the last two years, this is no longer the case! Production fees are less and far better quality than that of the station. We can produce a commercial with the same production look that used to cost upwards of $65,000 5 years ago for a lot less that that now. We can use custom cameras that shoot with the same cinematic qualities of a 35mm film camera and there have been huge advances in processor speeds for editing! Now, add to that access to some of the best creative writers in advertising and you get a value-add that the stations can’t possibly match.
SW
Scott Westerlaken
With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing, television commercials, film, video, communications, web, radio, print, and events, Scott has the ability to maintain focus on the big picture and offer a wide range of solutions appropriate to the clients message and budget. He has been recognized with dozens of awards in business, communications, and filmmaking from around the world. For the client, this means a truly unique balance of hands on technical knowledge and high level strategic experience that always leads to unique and creative solutions.