The Most Expensive Ads You Can Buy

Our guest blogger today is Phil Bernstein. After eleven years in professional baseball, working in marketing for the Portland Beavers and the New York Mets, Phil has spent the past 13 years in radio, designing campaigns to help Portland and Vancouver businesses tell their stories, find more customers, and make more sales. Currently, he works for Jim Doyle and Associates where Phil has a full spectrum perspective about Advertising on TV as well as Radio.

 

 

"The most expensive ads you can buy are the cheap ones that don't work." - Phil

 

A few weeks ago I met with three different business owners who were relatively new to broadcast advertising. All three (one was on radio, two were on television) had begun their very first advertising experience by signing up for a "rotator package."

 

Rotators are also known as "Run of Schedule," or ROS. They are commercials that are not guaranteed to run at any particular time -- they could air just about any time the station is on, from 5 in the morning until 12 midnight, seven days a week. In return for giving the station maximum flexibility to schedule the ads, the advertiser gets a significant discount on the price of each commercial.

  

"Your goal is to drive the nail through the board and then clench it on the other side. Messages that are clenched are remembered for a lifetime. Tap, tap goes the hammer. But during the night the claw pulls the nail back out of its little hole! The following day you find nothing more than a faint indentation in the board. The nail is no longer in it. Your message is forgotten.

Using the hole you started the previous day, you position the nail again. Tap, tap goes the hammer. But again falls the veil of darkness, eyes close, and the claw does its work once more. Day after day, this scene is repeated; but ever so slowly, the hole gets deeper." -Roy Williams

 

Rotators seem like a terrific way to put your toe in the water and try a medium out -- use the whole station, get a huge reach, and save money on the rate. But none of the three business owners was happy with the results they were getting.

 

Why not?

 

It goes back to Roy Williams and the hardwood. Let's say that at the same dollar amount, you have two options:

• You could buy ten commercials in the 5:00 p.m. news.
• Or you could buy twenty rotators, that could run any time Monday through Sunday, 5 a.m. until midnight.

In the first option, you whack the nail ten times into the same hole.

 

In the second option, you whack the nail twenty times, but in between each whack you take the nail out and move it somewhere else on the board.

 

The first option drives the nail in deeper. Much deeper. Even though each whack costs more money, the return on investment is much better.

  

"Concentration is the key to all economic success." -- Peter Drucker

 

 Whatever medium you choose, pick frequency over reach.

 

• Radio or television: concentrate your advertising on specific shows. Talk to the same audience over and over again. 
   
  
• Newspaper: you will get better results by placing your ad in the same section repeatedly, rather than moving it throughout the paper.
   
  
• Direct mail: three sales letters sent to the same 500 people will get you a stronger response than one letter sent to 1500 people.

 

By the way, the Roy Williams quotes above are from an essay entitled "Hardwood, Hammer, and Nail," that appears in his first Wizard of Ads book. The Wizard of Ads trilogy is one of the best resources on advertising ever written, and Roy (or someone close to him) has now made all three books available for a free download.

 

At the bottom of this newsletter, mixed among the usual cat videos and stupid human tricks, is a link for you to get your copy of each book.

 

You should do so, immediately.

To read all of Phil's recent Newletter Click Here