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Archive for category Low Budget Advertising

Shoot the messenger?

Apr 22

Posted by Scott Westerlaken in Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Scott Westerlaken, Television Advertising, Video Production, Web | No Comments

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Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

Despite popular opinion to the contrary, the Internet has not killed traditional TV advertising as a viable medium to promote products and services. In order to survive though, the network and local station approach to TV advertising that has to change in order to improve viewer engagement.

It’s no secret that ad revenue is WAY down.  Now part of this is the Pull(getting the programming you want now) versus Push (you watch what the network broadcasts) of the under 40 generation. Looking at this from a bigger picture, this is not the first time a medium has faced adversity and survived.  Think of the theatres during the eighties and the VHS revolution then radio with tapes and 8 tracks.  They all survived by figuring out the core value of their proposition, experience and entertainment.  TV can still AND IS doing that! The true reason TV is suffering is because the Networks and mostly the Local Stations are killing their own business by running bad ads, thus ruining the package for the audience.

Fundamentally we don’t mind watching for ads. Come on, think about it!  There are a number of tv shows that show nothing but the best or funniest ads from around the world.  Every year the Cannes and London International Awards reels tour major city theatres.  People will actually go to a theatre of all places to watch ads!  People don’t hate advertising, People LOVE advertising, if it’s GOOD!

Every time the networks and more importantly the local stations run a bad ad, they are in essence running a bad show.  In doing so they are forcing the viewer to look in other places for what they want, entertainment!

One quick cure for this is to treat the ad space with the same value as they treat the rest of the air time for programming.  This now puts a greater value on the space as people will want to watch (just like the show they tuned into did) and could also increase the monetary value placed ON the air time!  You are also giving the audience a complete experience rather than an incomplete one.

Unless the Networks and Local Stations put a higher value on the ad space, why should the media buyers and audience?!

SW

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.

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Lazy Boy and Lazy Creative

Apr 9

Posted by Al Graham in Al Graham, Guest Blogger, Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy | No Comments

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Talking Recliners and Sub Ovens that have Children.

Do you find watching TV a little depressing lately? Well I do.

One evening of viewing and one can’t help but wonder what happened to the creative advertising industry.

Take for example the series of spots that recently aired for Lazy Boy. In each spot we are asked to believe that recliners can talk. Wow what a premise!  Can you imagine the creative brief for this one? If that unbelievable premise ain’t bad enough how about a sub oven that, under physcotherapy, confesses to being a guys parent.

Neither of these spots is funny. Some lazy bastard, or worse a group of them, foisted these pieces of excrement on the client and beat their asses home – where being creatively responsible is not a prerequisite.

Al Graham

From People or Planes 1974 Gordon Willson

From People or Planes 1974 Gordon Willson

Al Graham is a veteran of the advertising wars who once smoked like Mad Men’s Don Draper. He is also a veteran of many social conflict wars and has been actively involved in protesting dumps, airports, expressways and urban sprawl.

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Nothing is Free…EVEN when you think it is!

Mar 29

Posted by Scott Westerlaken in Low Budget Advertising, Scott Westerlaken, Video Production | 4 Comments

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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

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.

Wikio
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Real Estate Marketing Trends

Feb 18

Posted by Scott Westerlaken in Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Scott Westerlaken, Social Media, Twitter, web video | No Comments

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housesIn the last few months I have been doing intense market research on real estate marketing and trends.  Not that it should come as a surprise to anyone but, things are changing.  Things are changing fast!  Just look at the USA market and you will quickly see where we are headed – when times are tough the strong, the quick to adapt and the most innovative succeed.

There is a strong move to the internet in the USA, not only how the client uses it, but the way Realtors are (or in some cases not) using it!  Just as the cell phone and email revolutionized the way Realtors did business, the internet is also changing the way business is conducted and won!

According to two different studies conducted in the USA, 80 to 95% of sellers and buyers are finding and researching their broker and agent on the internet before engaging their services.  If your web page hasn’t been optimized and isn’t regularly updated, then this should scare you into action!

The move to Facebook pages and Twitter is growing, but experienced brokers are still ignoring it’s potential to drive both sales and client acquisition.  Furthermore, Twitter searches conducted by home buyers or sellers is a growing practice and if you’re not monitoring your brand (or real estate in general) in this space, then you’re missing out!

Photo tours are still dominant in real estate, but a growing use of video to improve the client’s experience, the Realtor’s brand perception and the listing’s visibility is substantial.  The move to video tours has increased by up to 96% from 2008, with the top reason being home sellers love not having to disrupt their lives for numerous showings.  Further to this is the increase in search weight, caused by the rich media on the brokers’ site, while also providing a more engaging experience for home buyers.  Video is being used as a marketing tool to elevate the agent or broker’s brand perception, in addition to providing property-specific details.  A good example (if we do say ourselves) are the videos we did for Polycorp.

What does this all mean? Real estate brokers should be embracing the new tools available to them and encouraging agents to participate in social media.  It’s no longer good enough to have a static brochure on the website.  A broker’s site needs to be optimized for search, it should also be dynamic and engaging. Otherwise, the site simply gets lost in the search traffic maze.  And the best part is: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and most “social media” initiatives cost very little to implement and video content can be produced for as low as $50.

There are some pitfalls that real estate professionals need to keep in mind, however.  Everything you put out there must relate back to your brand. Just like you would not send out a newsletter that was poorly written and badly laid out, the same holds true for your social media and video efforts.  If you are setting up Facebook and Twitter accounts, they need to be branded and even more importantly, full of useful information for your clients that is updated regularly.  With video tours, also keep in mind that you need to keep it branded.  Think of video in the same way you would a brochure.  It all reflects on “how the client will view doing business with you”.  There is no shame in asking for help in these areas…your expertise is in the real estate business!

I can’t imagine a Realtor in this day and age saying they don’t have a cell phone, or email.  It’s fundamental to the way business is done today.  The same will be said about Facebook, Twitter, and websites with rich content in the next year or two!  We have been working on a few innovative ideas for clients and how they can use Facebook, Twitter and video to increase sales, client appeal and branding.  I would love to see some great examples of how others are also doing so, whether in real estate or not!

SW

Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

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.

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Good Ideas + Good Team = Effective Ads

Feb 10

Posted by Scott Westerlaken in Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Scott Westerlaken | No Comments

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I wrote a blog previously on cost effective TV ads but a couple more points have come to mind.  Shoot with the appropriate equipment that achieves the “look” you are aiming for and secondly, and not least of which, work “within” a team that will support you and your goals.

Too many good ideas, good people and good crews are ruined due to trying to achieve too much with too little.  A few years ago I did a series of ads with Page and Wood and Kim Dunn for McKenzie College.  Kim came to me early in the process with ideas and concerns about how to achieve the concepts with the minimal budget available.  This is where I came up with “if the creative can’t be executed well for the money available then adjust the creative to fit what it can be shot for”…meaning make it so that if it could only afford to be shot on video, make sure the “video” look would work creatively!  Kim pulled it off in spades.

More recently I was presented with a similar situation for a set of National TV spots for Herbal Magic.  I did some research and found the company very respectable and early on in the process found them fantastic to work with.  I am a champion of under dogs and go to the wall if I feel they value the effort and they did.  The Director(Tony Sasso) and I worked on a bunch of solutions to make the dollars stretch more than I thought possible.  We all new the limitations and all of us were looking for solutions rather than problems.  This went from the Client, to the star talent (Elizabeth Manley), to the Director, to the sound person and myself.  Now I don’t think we did award winning ads in anyway, but we did do ads that accomplished the clients’ goals, that are respectable and effective.  What more could you ask for?

Now, for those of you who happened to watched the US broadcast of the Super Bowl, you may have noticed Google’s “Parisian Love” ad.

Not only was it the least expensive ad that aired in that time slot it’s probably the least expensive ad that has aired for an international company in any time slot.  The spot proves a small budget doesn’t have to mean ‘low creative”, in most circumstances it means being more creative!

I would love to see some more examples from around the world and welcome your comments!

SW

Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

With over 25 years of award winning experience in marketing and communications, television commercials, film, video, 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.

Wikio
Wikio

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Creating Emotional Connections With Inexpensive Web Video

Jan 22

Posted by Chad in Guest Blogger, Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Social Media, Video Production, web video | No Comments

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Whatever your product or service, finding customers in a broad, cluttered market served by many competitors requires  more than a good website and brochure. It takes a lot of cold calling, relationship building…and, yes, sometimes sleepless nights and a little bit of luck too!

Fact is, to generate sustainable success, you’ve got to capture your customer’s attention by zeroing in on their specific product application or need, and then appeal directly to the points of pain associated with that product or process. In other words, you need to find an emotional connection and demonstrate clearly how your product will solve their concerns or inefficiencies.

In my years working in the foodservice equipment industry, I was responsible for marketing innovative equipment solutions that ultimately could provide operators with cost savings and a better quality product for their customers. The challenge was how do you convince a well-established, multi-national chain it should change the way it prepares its core product (in this case, beverages)?  Equipment is often viewed as a commodity and just another capital expense. To get a buy-in, an emotional connection was required where my product could address and demonstrate a solution to specific points of pain in their beverage preparation and delivery process.  However, demonstrating the product solution to all the decision makers, as well as the field operators,  would be a very expensive and time consuming exercise if we chose the “face to face” path. A fast, inexpensive way to reach the right people and communicate the most important points about my product, for a very specific product application, was what was required.

The solution was to develop a series of videos that demonstrated our product in action, solving a specific problem for a niche application.

The key to success here is that the videos need to be produced and delivered quickly to the customer, preferably shot in the customer’s environment for maximum effect, and they need to be short and to the point. The result? Instant demonstration of the product application in the customer’s environment that could easily be uploaded on the web or emailed to key decision makers. In fact, the process worked so well that the concept was expanded to include development of preventative maintenance and technical training videos. These videos were assembled into an easy to navigate, Flash-based user interface that enabled a customer to easily get the important information they needed about the product.

Similarly, in developing new market space for the MorSwift (www.morswift.com) morswift siterubber banding and bundling system, the challenge was to find a way to bring this innovative packaging solution to the attention of customers accustomed to using  traditional packaging methods.  Demonstrating the various niche applications for MorSwift would not only help the customer visualize how the banding system could fit into their production process, but also enables a way to communicate the key selling points of the system.  By developing short, cost-efficient videos with on-screen bullet pointsmorswift videos page (see http://www.morswift.com/videos.html),  then uploading these to the web, MorSwift is able to reach customers all over the world.  Rather than promote the MorSwift system as a broad, “packaging solution”, the company is able to use the videos to promote specific, niche product applications such as rubber banding of broccoli, crab, lobster, printed material, tools, etc.

It’s important to note that this is a dramatic change in approach to the traditional use of video where most applications of video are for broad strokes of image, company brand, and sales pitches.  Instead, the specific niche application for the product and related messaging is the focus of the video. Quick, to the point, in your face!

PHI Group can help you deliver creative, cost-effective and professional-looking product application videos that will knock the socks off of your customers!  The result?  Close sales faster by offering a more relevant, targeted sales pitch to your customers and reduce your travel and marketing expenses in the process.

For more examples of using video to promote your products and services, visit www.phigroup.ca

Please share with me your thoughts on this topic, I would like to hear from you.

Chad Wiesner (chadw@eastlink.ca)

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4 Filters For Low Budget TV Advertising

Dec 23

Posted by Scott Westerlaken in Low Budget Advertising, Marketing Strategy, Scott Westerlaken, Uncategorized, Video Production | 5 Comments

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Scott Westerlaken

Scott Westerlaken

I was watching local TV for the first time in a long while and on this rare occasion I saw a station produced ad that reminded me of how easily businesses lose sight of communicating their value proposition and key message.   The ad seemed to be produced so that the client could get excited about seeing their family on TV.  It would appear that they forget about the purpose of the ad!  At PHI we regularly run our ideas through four key filters, no matter what the budget.  They are: will the ad be noticeable, does it have a clear call to action, is it easy to act upon, and, most importantly…. is it watchable!

Noticeable: Will your message be seen at the right time, in the right setting. Seems simple enough but just watch late night TV and you will see some odd ads that got “great deals” on their media buy! Look at your television media buy as you would any other location where you would consider doing business.  LOCATION! LOCATION! LOCATION!

Clear Call To Action: I touched on this in one of my earlier blogs but here it is again.  Use a simple compelling statement and/or visuals to get your target to take action. If you leave your target wondering around, they just might wonder through your competition’s doors.

Easy To Act Upon: Unless you have a huge foot print (either physically or brand) tell us how to find you.  Make whatever method you choose easy for the viewer to remember (like “located in the heart of downtown) or a memorable phone number or website.  Leaving your target something that they would need to write down in order to remember is a “killer’ as no one ever does!

Watchable: It might not be an award winning ad but it needs to be able to communicate the message.  The better crafted the message the more likely the target will watch or even enjoy watching.  Otherwise people will just tune it out. Google Ads method of placement is quite intriguing and is where stations should be striving in the future (I’ll write about this and how it could save network TV in the new year).  It’s the same reason why everyone wants to watch the US national broadcast of the Super Bowl rather than the local station feeds!

Even low budget, simple message ads can be watchable and hard working.  If they can do it for the “Snuggie” and “Chia Pet” why not yours!

Further, but often overlooked as common sense, make the information you are communicating compelling and relevant to the audience.  If you sell industrial generators you don’t need to advertise on local TV!  Also, make whatever you are trying to sell look and/or sound great AND, hey, while you’re at it, make people feel some emotion for it!  On a side note, if your product is food, then if you do nothing else, make it look edible… Granted, it is hard to make smoked meat look good, but knowing that means if you can’t…THEN DON’T!

It doesn’t take a much to do ultra low budget ads correctly, funny enough you usually don’t have much to work with!  I produced these low budget adds for Greco almost 5 years ago but they still hold up, look great, and communicate the message effectively!

Another Greco Ad I produced that was effective and ultra low budget was the Lost ad.  Simple idea, only one main talent and a great sound track.

I did an ad for a small furniture store in Sidney Nova Scotia almost ten years ago that normally had their commercials done by the local station.  The brief: Must communicate the “sale”, must have a unique approach from what the station kept on delivering (why we got the call) and must be produced for under $2,000.

I normally don’t show the series of ads in my portfolio and, frankly, this is the first time I’ve showed anyone.  In marketing no one looks to see a $$ figure before or after they watch a commercial.  I also think it could have been executed a little better but hindsight and 10 years will do that to most.  It did get results though, which the station ads didn’t.

Each organization has it’s own problems they need to solve and messages they need to convey.  It is those items that will be the definer for how their ads should be approached and executed on.  In reality, if your ideas miss on the four filters you could be just wasting  your media buy.  When it comes to low budget and Station produced ads it’s up to the advertiser to make sure their money is used effectively.

I would love to get some more links to good ultra low budget station ads and…by the way…Happy Holidays!

SW

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