In one of my previous lives I was a cable television advertising salesman in Austin from 1990-2000. When I started with Austin Cablevision, we had 11 cable networks to offer customers for local television advertising. By 1995 we had 18 networks to offer and that number grew to 29 by the year 2000. Back in those days, a number of times I was asked by my various counter parts at Austin local television stations if I found it hard to keep up with all the networks and programming.  My answer was simply, “no, it wasn’t that hard.” In fact, being an avid television viewer myself, it came rather naturally to me to keep track of all the networks, programming and the demographics they served. More importantly keeping up with the programming on multiple networks did not pose a problem; it created a wonderful opportunity for my cable advertising clients and me.

By 1990, America’s television viewing habits were diversifying at an unprecedented rate and by 1995 the cable networks combined had a greater share of the television audience than that of the four major networks. The rapid pace of change in television viewing created nooks and crannies where a savvy cable salesperson could tap rich veins of audiences that advertiser demand hadn’t caught up with. That meant I could offer my clients low cost per thousand (CPM) spots in programming that was delivering valuable audiences to them. For example, in 1991 when most media buyers and local businesses were buying cable almost exclusively in primetime, I sold spots on weekday CNN Morning News in Austin for $10 per spot. At the time CNN was the only cable news network making that offer incredibly attractive given that spots on Good Morning America or The Today Show were going for about $200.  Eventually the demand for CNN in the morning caught up with the viewing trends and the rates went up. But as demand caught up with the audience on one network or program, three more opportunities would pop up. Thursday night college football on ESPN was very cheap for a year or two as was NFL Gameday on Sunday Morning. In 1998, I sold a Day Trading Firm incredibly low cost spots on CNBC in Squawk Box which ran Monday through Friday at 6am – 9am. The first spot that ran blew up my client’s phone system.

My purpose here is not to tell war stories from my media sales days but to introduce you to the way I approach media buying for my clients. I’m fascinated by — and constantly on the make for — nooks and crannies of viewership on television and radio that advertiser demand hasn’t caught up with.

I was taking with a friend and client recently who was concerned about the growing ineffectiveness of his direct mail advertising campaign.  Direct mail had commanded the largest share of his advertising budget for years. But his return on that medium had diminished so drastically that he was contemplating putting his direct mail budget into television advertising.  Yet he had a nagging doubt about television advertising because he and his friends and acquaintances had a DVR or Tivo and they were recording the programs they wanted to watch and were zipping through all the commercials.

I acknowledged my friend’s concern but reminded him as business people we rarely want to make business decisions based on anecdotal evidence and then I offered up the research that I had at hand. While DVR services definitely have their devoted followers, you’ll be stunned when you learn how limited their actual use is. According the recent research done at Media Life magazine, only forty four percent of the population even has DVR and 90% of television viewing remains live. Of those who do have a DVR, only 20% of their viewing is done on a time delay.

In case you need some less sterile, less academic research to convince you that people are still seeing and acting on television advertising.  I just finished reviewing a call report for one of my clients and I was able to correlate to the minute 27 out of 42 phone calls to the time one of his television commercials aired.

If people can zip through their shows why isn’t the practice rampant: because people want their television live and in real time. Who wants to watch their morning news at night? Who wants to watch a big game the next day? Who wants to wait even longer to see their favorite show?  I know that tonight I’ll be tuning in at 8pm sharp for the long awaited Season five premiere of “Mad Men.” Okay that’s anecdotal but I’m just saying…

The television landscape has definitely changed over the last four years, but some cornerstones remain. People are watching a lot of television first run, and they are seeing commercials that are affecting their buying decisions.

All that said as the owner of an advertising agency who advises clients on advertising and marketing strategy I can’t ignore the obvious. Let me pepper you with some statistics that probably won’t surprise you.

1. 79% of consumers use a smart phone to help with shopping.

2. 70% use their smart phone while they’re in the store.

3. 74% made a purchase based on smart phone search.

4. 88% take action to make a purchase the same day they searched.

5. 71% searched because they saw an ad.

6. 43% searched on a smart phone because they saw a television ad.

Not surprised by these numbers right? That’s interesting because 79% of businesses who advertise don’t have a mobile optimized website. If you’re part of the 79% give us a call. We’ll help you create a mobile friendly website. It’s quick and surprisingly affordable.

8   5   4   9   1   7   6   3   2

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If you weren’t able to solve it, don’t feel bad, you are in good company as most cannot. If you did solve it, you may be a Mensa genius and never realized it, time to reassess! This puzzle is very telling about the way that we approach challenges. Given a list of numbers, your mind relied on old tricks and formulas, pretty much everything you could remember about numbers, to determine if there was a pattern or higher order. After a long struggle thinking this way, with no results, a conclusion has to be reached-you’re taking the wrong approach. Even if you have an advanced degree in chaos mathematics, thinking in terms of numbers cannot solve this problem.

But what if we tackled this problem in a completely different way and brought an entirely different perspective to the table? Here’s a different way to look at these numbers.

Eight   Five   Four   Nine   One   Seven   Six   Three   Two

Did looking at the numbers this way give you the answer? Maybe for a select few of you it did. The answer is-the numbers are listed in alphabetical order. I know, quite an evil thing for a person to do, especially to computer programmers. What was crucial for solving this puzzle was to bring a different perspective to the challenge, to see the challenge in a different light. This lesson applies to much more than Mensa puzzles that help plane flights to pass, it is universal to the challenges that we face daily in our professional and personal lives. Sometimes it just takes a fresh perspective and a new way of thinking to crack the code.

At Frink Inc. Advertising we like helping clients find solutions to their advertising, marketing and sales riddles. From the practical to the whimsical we can offer you fresh perspectives on how to deliver your message to the right audience effectively and efficiently.

1. What do you want to see your business achieve as a result of this campaign?

2. How will you measure results?

3. In simplest terms how do you define your business?

4. How do you define your product/services?

5. Describe your target market in terms of demographics, psycho-graphics, lifestyle etc.

6. Can this market be segmented? If so how?

7. Describe your ideal prospect.

8. What does a prospect expect from a business like yours?

9. What would cause a business like yours to lose a customer?

10. What causes a prospect to start searching for your business’s products and service?

11. How does a prospect go about looking for a business like yours?

12. What is the main reason one of your prospects becomes a customer?

13. Who are your main competitors?

14. How does the prospect view these competitors?

15. How does the prospect view your company?

16. What do your competitors say about themselves?

17. What can you offer that the competition doesn’t?

18. What good things do customers say about your business?

19. What negative things do customers say about your business?

20. What advertising and marketing tactics have you tried in the past that worked? What didn’t work?

There are two reasons that only two out of hundreds of offers were actually good deals:
1. The One-Day sale offers are for broad rotator spots such as Monday-Sunday 6am – 12 midnight. Usually the stations have allocated about 2/3 of the spots you’ll get to non-primetime hours. Primetime in radio is defined as Monday-Friday 6am-7pm. The stations intent, in my opinion, is to sell non-primetime spots that normally they don’t sell much of.

2. I’m a professional media buyer with 21+ years of experience in media sales and media buying. I negotiate rates aggressively all year long. The buys that I make for my clients deliver more value than most of the stations One-Day Sale offers.

Before you plunk down any money on a One-Day Radio Sale contact me. I’m conducting 365 Day Sale on radio rates 365 days a year.

With more than 30 years of experience in video production, we’ve done everything from commercials to training videos to product marketing. Some of our clients have been Time Warner, EZ Pawn, Roger Beasley Mazda, Golfsmith, Gumbo’s, Scholz Beer Garten, ABC Pest Control, Maund Volkswagen, Derm Research, Buffet Palace and many more.

To start the process we’ll have a pre-production meeting, ask a lot of questions and help determine just what you need to get your message across. The next thing is to collaborate on ideas for the script.
Then when the script is ready, shooting can be done on location or in studio.

We shoot with Sony’s EX-1R high definition camera and edit on Final Cut Pro. Other tools we use are Adobe Photoshop and After Effects.

We take care of hiring on-camera talent and getting voiceover work done. If stock video or photos are needed, those can be purchased and downloaded. Graphics will be created prior to post-production.

You should figure about an hour of post-production per finished minute for a long-form video. A 30-second commercial may take several hours, depending on what graphics and effects are needed.

When the video is ready we’ll send you an approval copy for your review. If any changes are needed they will be made promptly and your video will be ready to go. We will then encode your video for various broadcast specifications or for the web.

Whether you need full HD production for broadcast or need video for your website in HD, Frink Inc will get it done on time and on budget. Our job is to make it as easy as possible for you and to communicate your message effectively.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yL3XPc4GlrI

Today’s video technology is, without a doubt, amazing. Just a few years ago, anyone wanting to produce a truly professional video for television or the web would have no choice except to hire a professional camera crew and editing studio and it was expensive.

Today, anyone can buy an inexpensive high-definition camera to capture video. They can edit that video using inexpensive or even free, post-production editing programs. And many of our smart phones offer up usable high-definition video capabilities.

So, why not do it yourself? Many who decide to do so end up with a product that does not truly perform or gain the results they hoped for. A quick tour through on line video services like YouTube illustrates the problem, perhaps best explained in the saying, being able to paint or draw does not make someone an artist. Merely using the most technically advanced cameras and editing software does not make someone a professional producer.

“Well, do I need a professional producer? Maybe what I can do is good enough and will save money.”

The problem here is not artistry in and of itself, but what that gives you in the final product: effective communication. A professional look equals a professional impression with customers. Conversely, amateur looks equate to an amateur impression of you. Your homemade video might look OK to you, and with today’s cameras it may look technically fine, but it may also not be effective in communicating to your customers or audience.

An effective video requires serious time and effort in script writing and planning before any footage is shot for it to be a compelling.

When your video presentation is viewed by your prospects, customers, employees, and peers they will instinctively compare it to highly polished work they see on broadcast network television and the web. If your video is not professionally written, shot and edited it reflects that on you and your business.

Why you might ask, would anybody intentionally portray themselves as a “hick.” Andy’s motivation was what we call in the advertising and marketing industry, “branding” and “positioning”.  Andy and I were members of a large fraternity at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s.  The fraternity from a social stand point was our world, a small provincial, pretentious, chauvinistic world. Many of our “brothers” were handsome guys; we called them “face jocks”.  Even more of them seemed to be from wealthy families.  They dressed well and they drove very nice late model automobiles.  Being a face jock, dressing well and driving nice cars had its’ advantages in the Greek world at The University of Texas in the mid 1970s.  The most important advantage of course was with the women.  If you had these characteristics you were guaranteed opportunities to date some beautiful sorority girls who might also be from a wealthy family.  Yeah the Greek world at The University had some shallow aspects to it.

Andy wasn’t a face jock. He didn’t drive a nice late model car and he didn’t appear to be from a wealthy family. Since he couldn’t compete in those areas Andy brilliantly identified a strength he could exploit when it came to competing against wealthy “face jocks” for women.  Andy developed a “charming hick” persona.  Think Andy Griffith as the small town North Carolina sheriff in The Andy Griffith Show.  Andy was good at it.  He worked construction during summers in east Texas and enjoyed using the region’s accent and some of its’ interesting phraseology that he had picked up.  His positioning strategy worked.  Andy dated more than his share of pretty sorority girls and eventually became engaged to one during his senior year.

I wasn’t rich or particularly handsome and I had no gimmick as Andy perceptively pointed out.  Despite Andy’s advice I didn’t identify a positioning strategy that I could successfully execute.  Therefore my love life was some what of a bust juxtaposed to my roommate the “Charming hick”.

What’s your business’ “gimmick” i.e. your position versus your competition?  What do you do best?  What do you want to perceived by the marketplace?  Have you done what Andy did by identifying and exploiting a market niche for yourself?  Or are you like I was– without a positioning strategy? If your position is: “low prices”, “been in business for over 20 years” or “locally owned and operated,” you probably haven’t claimed a unique position in the market place and my advice to you is,  “you got to have a gimmick.”

bill@frinkadvertising.com