Welcome to the Partisan Advertising blog.
The Partisan Advertising blog has advertising agency-related posts dating back to 2010 covering a vast array of topics.
Creating effective advertising.
In this blog post, I'm going to give you insight on what to look for when you want to advertise your product or services.
There are four important steps in advertising that you need to be aware of if you want your advertising to be effective.
In this blog post, I'm going to give you insight on what to look for when you want to advertise your product or services. You'll learn some of the best tips and tricks to embrace while you're trying to make decisions on how to market your business. Effective advertising is essential for businesses and organisations that want to get noticed, gain customer loyalty, and generate leads and sales.
1. You need a big idea.
Most advertising experts agree that good creative concepts rate high on the must-have list. If your creative concept, or the “big idea” as it’s often referred to, is lacking, then no amount of marketing or brand development will help your business.
The big idea is what captures your potential customer's attention in the first place. It gives you a chance to build your brand recognition with them and convey your message — which can lead to greater customer loyalty!
So, how do you know if your big idea is any good?
1. Do people understand it?
If you look at the concept and think, “I don't get it”, then this is most likely the case for most other people too. The big idea should have told a story or given the user an insight into how to use the product or service. If there are no clues in the concept, it's probably not very good.
2. Does it make you feel something?
Good advertising concepts should give you an emotion; happiness, fear, excitement – something to stir the blood! If the concept doesn't leave you feeling anything at all, then it’s time to start again.
3. Is it memorable?
Memorable concepts tell a story, often with subliminal messages and symbolism. If yours is boring and uninteresting, then people will forget about it after ten seconds of looking at it.
4. Does it create an experience?
Experiences make people feel something, whether they have gone through something similar in their own lives or not. Good concepts touch on experiences that everybody can relate to in one way or another.
2. Understanding your customers.
Next on the list is understanding what people want and how your product or service can solve their problems. People don't want to buy products; they want to solve the problem the product or service will solve.
Both advertising and marketing methods should be focused on the benefits and needs of customers. Understanding why prospective customers need your product and what it will mean for them to buy it versus another similar option – that's real marketing.
But customers also need to understand how important the benefits are — is it something customers really want? For example, consumers might like the idea of buying free-range eggs because they believe that chickens enjoy better living conditions. However, they may not be willing to pay much more for this benefit.
3. Tell better stories.
The way you tell a story will ultimately determine whether your audience will listen to you or not. There's no such thing as "bad" advertising, only bad storytellers. It's all in how you tell the story that makes it effective or not effective.
Why storytelling works:
People have always loved stories. The best way to get your point across is to start off with a good story, even if it isn't directly related to the product you're selling.
People don't care about your products; they care about themselves. If you want people to pay attention to your advertisement, make it about them and not about you or your company.
Advertising should be entertaining and educational at the same time. If people are enjoying themselves, they'll pay more attention to what you're saying, and if they learn something new, they'll remember it for a long time.
4. Measure the effectiveness
Advertising is expensive and the only reason to advertise is to get results. Selling products and services is the true measurement of the success of an advertising campaign.
There are several ways to measure the effectiveness of advertising. Among them are:
Increase in sales. This can be measured by several factors, including gross sales, increase in market share, and increase in profits.
Increase in customer traffic. This can be measured by monitoring foot traffic into a retail location or website traffic for online stores.
Increase in brand awareness, recognition, and recall. There are many techniques that can be used to measure these factors, including simple name recall techniques and brand association techniques.
In conclusion, do great work. Measure your success. These are lessons almost any creative director will tell you and it's a testament to how valuable measurement can be for businesses.
Most types of marketing can be quantified in some way, even if it isn't easy. Sales leads won't magically generate on their own every time you advertise, so don't only use that as a barometer of success.
Find ways to track goals (e.g., sales leads, web traffic, brand reputation) and then hold those metrics up against ROI projections to see if you need to make changes or reallocate your budget going forward.
When putting together an advertising campaign, remember why Seth Godin calls marketing a real job because it is one that requires measurement and discipline.
Learning from Advertising
It wasn’t that long ago that I was based in Auckland working in advertising.
It wasn’t that long ago that I was based in Auckland working in advertising.
It doesn’t seem possible to me now but I was working for New Zealand’s largest (and only real) business newspaper.
My role? Advertising Agency Account Manager, which basically meant that I spent most of my time convincing ad agencies to spend their client’s hard-earned loot in our paper.
While I had clients all around the country, the majority of my business came from agencies around Auckland, specifically those dotted around the city fringe and CBD, which is where the big players tend to be based.
To say I learned a lot in that high-pressure role is an understatement.
Working with agencies has been described by a more poetic individual than myself as “Trying to herd cats with a piece of wet spaghetti”. That’s about right. Navigating the egos, agendas and occasional not-so-subtle crazy streaks isn’t always easy, but there are some great people out there, and I have to admit that I had a lot of fun, wining, dining, and drinking endless coffees from the bottom of Quay Street to the top of Mount Eden, and through Ponsonby and into the great ad hub of Parnell.
As in any industry, mixed in among the good folk, there was a smattering of serious no-hopers, and of course, the usual 80% of people just doing their jobs with no particular zeal or inspiration. As I saw often enough, and continue to observe from my LinkedIn feed, unless you founded the agency, or are very senior indeed, a job is just a job, and a client is just a client.
Picture this: a young media buyer might be pushing me to the limits on Monday to get the best deal for her client (Luxury Car Company A). But she could be pushing me just as hard on Friday that same week in her new role at a new agency that holds the directly competing Luxury Car Company B account.
And of course, a creative who lives and breathes what he does on a certain account can transfer that passion and loyalty to another account at another agency at the drop of a hat combined with the chance to put another $10K on his paycheck.
I’m not entirely sure how this endless game of musical chairs can be good for the client, but then again, the clients themselves chop and change their agencies a lot.
They’re looking for a fresh perspective, more innovation or just a new broom sweeping clean. In some cases, the change is motivated by nothing more than a new marketing face at the C-Suite level who wants to stamp their vision on the company (and to bring their agency buddies along with them).
I’ve also worked on the fringes of the consumer electronics game since 2006, and I’ve not only seen advertising and PR agency representation change repeatedly in this space over the last ten years, but I’ve also seen a number of supplier/distributor changes. Brands that have been represented by a certain local distributor for decades have suddenly switched allegiance to a new distributor, which can sometimes trigger a domino effect as other brands and suppliers shuffle around to fill gaps and create equilibrium again.
At the end of the day, it’s usually more or less transparent to the consumer. After all, the ads out there are pretty much “same same” as they say in Thailand, as are the products and services themselves.
As long as punters can buy what they need and want, when they need and want to, they simply don’t care. So what does it matter which agency handles which account, or which distributor handles which brand?
Generally, it doesn’t, but I’ve seen some casualties and collateral damage along the way.
I’ve seen agencies lose accounts from sheer complacency, and I’ve seen clients fire great agencies and take on total muppets, which had to hurt them in the long run. I’ve seen technology companies lose key agencies and get hammered in the process, and I’ve seen brands lose out big time by switching from an established agent to one who promised much and delivered little.
Again, the consumer didn’t really notice or care but you’d better believe that the people at those companies did.
This brings me to the moral of the tale. If you’re thinking of change, whether you work at an ad agency and are looking to move, or you’re a senior agency suit thinking of firing a client, or even a bigwig at a client thinking of firing an agency, you need to be sure that you understand what you’re doing.
Raw emotion plays no part in these choices, and change for change’s sake is a truly awful way to run a career or a business. Logic and reason have to be your base, along with a keen sense of your long-term industry relationships. Run the numbers, think through the options, and do your due diligence as deeply as possible because if you don’t, if you’re just going with your gut, you might just end up regretting it somewhere down the track.
Playing a game of musical chairs and relocating your agency suits and creatives into different seats in different suburbs of the big smoky city just because everyone else is doing it is infantile. Think 10 years down the track, not next year and make decisions that’ll serve you, not your ego.
This brings me to the actual moral of the tale and the whole point of this post. How do you go about finding and hiring an advertising agency? Well, you apply exactly the same approach as mentioned above. There has to be a genuine synergy between your company and the agency, which is admittedly an emotional thing but it’s also all about people. Have you met all the people who’ll be handling your account in a major way? Wait, you’ve only met the senior team and your suit? How does that make any sense?
Meet the people. This is critical even if it’s a small agency and the staff complement is limited. Ask the questions that need answering – like where is your account on the totem pole in terms of revenue generation? Because that’ll tell you a lot about how much care and attention you’ll get.
Challenge the agency people to surprise you. After all, you don’t want more of the same ideas, do you?
Then put the people aside and look at the work. See what the agency is doing out in ad land, and not just their big high profile accounts. Who else do they represent? What aren’t they showing you?
Speak to their current and former clients. Find out the secrets and see what the skeletons in the closet look like.
Yes, this all sounds like a lot of work but think about it like this: you’re entrusting these guys with the colossal responsibility of making your company a lot more money, and differentiating your brands in a market where the consumer is at saturation point. You need a long-term relationship, not a ship meeting in the night routine. If you’re not 100% confident, don’t go there.
The Role of Advertising Agencies
Knowing the role of advertising agencies in your business is crucial. These days advertisers and marketers are spoilt for choice for advertising agencies, so how do you know which advertising agency is right for you?
Knowing the role of advertising agencies in your business is crucial. These days advertisers and marketers are spoilt for choice for advertising agencies, so how do you know which advertising agency is right for you?
There is, at hand, a range of advertising agencies and advertising services to benefit, just about, any business or non-profit.
In this blog, we take a non-partisan look at:
The types of advertising agencies
The services advertising agencies may provide, including:
Strategy planning and development
Research
Brand campaign and development
Media planning
Advertising production
Testing and measurement
The types of advertising agencies
When advertising agencies first came on the scene, they were most often a group of individuals with the sole aim of selling space in periodicals from which they received a commission.
Then the more enterprising of those salesmen (they were nearly all men) provided a further incentive by offering to produce creative content to fill that space. Often that meant special writers (copywriters) and artists were being employed by the salesman to design and make the ads.
The advent of the modern advertising agency was with us and largely stayed that way in New Zealand until 1966, when a small boat slipped its mooring and fled out to the Hauraki Gulf and started broadcasting as Radio Hauraki. That turned the agency-world upside down.
It meant that with more media choices, media selection became a specialist craft rather than a function of the account executive whose previous options were mainly restricted to government television, government radio, the Listener (for a time), or whichever newspaper best reflected the desired demographic.
The range of services advertising agencies offered expanded exponentially. Even so, the advertising agencies back then bear little resemblance to today’s advertising agencies.
Today, you can have a bespoke advertising agency to fit your exact needs. They range from full-service agencies, often but not always large and global, to smaller companies such as those specialising in digital media, social media, creative boutiques, or media buying.
Each has a role. How to select which you need and which type of agency suits you best warrants another blog – and it will get one.
But let’s look at the roles full-service agencies can offer because that’s what Partisan offers—and, no, we are neither large nor global. You’ll remember that we listed those roles above. But what do they mean?
1. Strategy planning and development
A properly constituted advertising agency can pay real dividends for you here. Few advertising campaigns can be successful if they don’t have a prescribed strategy. That strategy should include brand positioning, brand equity (the attributes you wish to ascribe to your brand), point of difference, timing, and even price points. The fact is that none of these aspects should be constructed in isolation or governed by personal bias.
The real value of employing an agency to do the work for you is that they will approach the task from an unbiased point of view with the marketing knowledge, experience, and resources that augment and enhance your core role as a business.
2. Research
This service should perhaps come before strategy development because research into your market and perceived demographics will govern so much of your strategy. An advertising agency knows what it needs to know to construct a compelling and persuasive message for you.
Allow them to go out to the market for you. They know what questions to ask to enable them to do their job for you, and whilst they won’t necessarily do the research themselves (few agencies do), they will know which research companies to employ and what questions to ask to get the information they and you need to know before creating a campaign.
3. Brand campaign and development
It’s a staple of advertising agencies. That is not to diminish the other services a full-service advertising agency offers, but creating the brand and building a campaign around it is what an advertising agency does best—it’s also the exciting part. And here is a little Partisan secret for you that most advertising agencies won’t tell you—you must be involved in that process.
You have a role to play working with the agency, particularly the creative team, that crafts a compelling message reflecting the values and aspirations you have for your product or service. Get yourself an agency that makes you part of the team. Your involvement will enhance the campaign, and—believe us—you’ll have a lot of fun.
4. Media Planning
A good media planner can take all the guesswork out of media planning and help you choose where to advertise so that you get the biggest return for your buck which can be the difference between winning and losing.
And that's the role of a media planner. They can help you make better choices that are tailored to your business, and to your budget. A good one will make you question your current assumptions about locations, sizes, and frequency. It might even mean that you don't run traditional advertising for a while if it isn't the most economical option. This is true whether you're spending $1,000 or $100,000.
5. Advertising production
This is the sweatshop of the advertising agency world. And we don’t mean that in a derogatory manner. It’s simply the part of the process where a good agency, armed with a clear visionary strategy, research, resources, and experience, will hunker down and get those ads and other messaging done and out.
It’s also the part of the process that you need to allow your agency the freedom to get on with the job. All the strategising, research, and brainstorming (all of which, as we said, should involve you) has been done at this point; now is the time to allow the agency to get on with their job… and deliver.
6. Testing and measurement
How successful was the campaign? There are many ways to measure that. The most obvious are product sales or service uptake, and you might be satisfied with just the in-house figures you are getting.
But one question remains unanswered: could you have done better? And that is why ongoing testing is essential for the agency and you. It enables the campaign and the core message to be adapted, nuanced, and optimised. But it’ll happen only if you have your agency find out what’s going on out there.
I’ll give you an example. I have a son who, as a toddler, was the sole performer in a 60 second TV commercial for a wallpaper company. He became famous. He was recognised and stopped on the street. Everybody knew the ad or had seen the ad. The problem was that all those people attributed the ad to the wrong brand! “Are you the little boy in the Ashley Wallpaper commercial?” they asked–“No,” was the reply.
The ad was for Vision Wallpaper. The market leader (Ashley Wallpaper), not the brand my son was helping promote, was taking all the kudos–and sales. Measurement and testing would have picked that up; it’s a wise investment, and your agency should be amenable to it. Accountability is the key.
There are other things an agency can do for you. A good agency, anyway. But if you are looking to optimise and get the best benefit from your advertising agency, think about this—maybe the best role they can have is to be part of your team and for you to be part of theirs: to develop a partnership where common goals and communication are frequent and fundamental. You and your agency are onto a winner if you get that going.
What's Your Advertising Budget?
Advertising agencies, corporates with a big advertising budget, small businesses with a reasonable advertising budget, and even your wanna-be influencer friend who buys branded everything because it’s within their budget, advertise.
Everyone has an advertising budget, even if they spend all of it or not.
Advertising agencies, corporates with a big advertising budget, small businesses with a reasonable advertising budget, and even your wanna-be influencer friend who buys branded everything because it’s within their budget, advertise.
Adding our good old friend, the Internet, we’re constantly bombarded with messages about what to buy and where to buy them – and if you’re as high-strung as I am, you tend to plan your life out to the T (or at least try). I think any reasonable person often has a budget they work with – whether you’re responsible for it or not is an entirely different topic.
For example, I have a grocery budget (like many people)! What I can and cannot purchase will depend on that budget – and sometimes, that budget can even increase or decrease, depending on other factors. This begs me to ask; WHAT’S THE BUDGET?
Advertising is not everyone’s game – but so is every other work that requires expertise to provide. Let’s say your watch broke and you need a new one, but you can only spare $300 for it; you know not to go shopping at any luxury stores. In the same way, when you have $50,000, you’re more likely to be able to afford a watch that represents status as well as tells time.
I know that anything that has to do with money is a tricky conversation to have. Whether that’s asking a bank for a loan or getting quotes from different companies – people tend to shy away from disclosing what their budget is. I understand that people tend to gravitate towards either the cheapest option or the option with the best value these days. However, as a company that supplies services to clients – it’s critical for us to know what your actual budget is.
In saying that, here are four reasons why you should disclose your budget to an advertising agency:
It gives us a better idea of how to provide (and deliver) your advertising requirement.
Knowing your budget saves both parties’ TIME – the most precious resource we have in life.
It streamlines the process of finding the right solution to your problem.
You’ll find that disclosing your budget for every project produces the best value from your advertising.
By now, people should be aware that they will always get what they pay for – but in terms of advertising, you will always be better off telling us what your budget is. I know that there’s a whole heap of trust involved when it comes to spending money, but advertising should always be looked at as an investment rather than an expense. Advertising is an art of persuasion. When you trust your advertising agency, they will work hard for you to get value out of your spending, but most importantly, they will lay out a plan to use your budget to create revenue for your business.
Now tell me, what’s your budget?
ANZ Bank – We Do How
ANZ bank has been pushing their latest advertising campaign, “We do how”, for quite some time now. As is the norm for the banking sector, ANZ is still advertising the usual bank offerings. There’s nothing new on offer that you can’t get with any other bank. The campaign is fairly good as far as banking advertising goes, and like all banks, it’s backed by a mega media budget.
ANZ bank has been pushing their latest advertising campaign, “We do how”, for quite some time now.
As is the norm for the banking sector, ANZ is still advertising the usual bank offerings. There’s nothing new on offer that you can’t get with any other bank. The campaign is fairly good as far as banking advertising goes, and like all banks, it’s backed by a mega budget.
The characters in the campaign, the Sharma family, are fairly likeable. We have Ravi; the “trying-too-hard-hero-dad”, Claire; the token mother, and Sameer and Tara; the prop-like children. The variations of the theme are clever in the series of ads they’ve made, which blend together nicely.
However, their singular pay-off line in the advert below makes me cringe: “See how ANZ could help you pay off your home loan faster”. As a homeowner, I’m really into the concept of paying off our mortgage as fast as possible. The idea of paying vast amounts of interest to tyrannical banks has no appeal to me and I want to be out of our black hole of debt as quickly as possible.
The depressing part of this commercial is that ANZ clearly shows that our characters have had a mortgage since January 2000, and now, 22 years later, they still owe $47,360. 22 Years in debt is already a very long time.
What’s far worse in this advertisement is that ANZ’s claim is frivolous and that’s because one word sticks out of their payoff line: “See how ANZ could help you pay off your home loan faster”. Yes, they could help you, but will they, and how? How can ANZ advertise such a vague, variable service in such a way? It’s all puffery. I can’t even say they’ve used some smoke and mirrors trickery here – they’ve just weaselled out of their service offering by claiming that they might be able to help.
If the Sharma family have been in debt for 22 years, how is ANZ making their mortgage go “out the door” any faster? And most importantly, what benefits are there for consumers to move from one faceless banking institution to another? If all they can offer are low mortgage rates then how long will it take for other banks to match them?
What would have happened if ANZ and their advertising agency, TBWA NZ, used a more persuasive word that drives action, like “will”? What if ANZ had instead said, “See how ANZ will help you pay off your home loan faster”? What would the response have been from consumers and would they switch to ANZ?
One word can make all the difference, especially in advertising.
Media Space Versus Creative – Who Wins?
The creative work of advertising agencies is more important than media space. Media space is the exact same 30 seconds of wasted time as it was 30 seconds ago. Media space is static, boring, unchallenging, and interruptive. Media is nothing without the creative message, especially if the creativity asks for permission to communicate with consumers.
The creative work of advertising agencies is more important than media space.
Media space is the exact same 30 seconds of wasted time that it was 30 seconds ago. Media is static, boring, unchallenging, and interruptive. Media is nothing without a creative message, especially if the creativity asks for permission to communicate with consumers.
Here are ten pros and cons of media and creativity:
Con: Media is just a space, and there’s too much space, meaning media is no longer valuable or scarce. Please tell me, where can’t I advertise?
Pro: You can make heaps of cash through media commission throughout the lifetime of the campaign. Produce one ad and run it for a year and you’re rolling in it.
Con: You can’t make heaps of cash through creativity. Sorry.
Con: Creativity is a sliding scale and suffers from the “Jackson Pollock Curse”. What appeals to one person is a failure to many others.
Pro: Media doesn’t necessarily share creativity’s failures. The ads will still run if the client is happy to do so, even if consumers find the ads ineffective.
Con: Media measurement is mostly pointless. One hundred thousand people saw your ad three times during a six-month campaign – how many sales did you make?
Con: Don’t get me started on how media builds awareness. Awareness is masturbation.
Con: Media is an interruption. Who invited you into my life? People care that you have their permission to talk to them. Just because I have an Internet connection doesn’t mean you can bombard me with banner ads.
Con: If you’re spending big money on media, then creativity loses power. Think of Harvey Norman, Bunnings, and Mitre 10, all not known for creative excellence.
Pro: Creativity is unbridled, powerful, and can be life-altering and immense.
A lot more cons than pros. In most circumstances, people do not care about the place but only about the content. No one stands outside the Louvre to say they stood outside the Louvre. They stand for hours outside the Louvre so they can say they finally got in and saw the Mona Lisa or the Venus de Milo. I’ll admit that not every gallery is as amazing as the Louvre, and obviously, not every piece of art is a Mona Lisa, but how many people want to stare at a blank wall?
Creativity wins.
Often the story is truer than the truth.
It’s a universal truth. Or is it?
People love a good story, and nothing is truer than in the world of advertising. The story of how delicious a McDonalds’ burger looks and influences us in an advert is far more powerful than the truth – the tiny burger that you get in a store, stuffed into a tight, snapping white box, and dumped into a brown paper bag.
People love a good story, and nothing is truer than in advertising.
Or is it? The story of how delicious a McDonalds’ burger looks and influences us in an advert is far more powerful than the truth – the tiny burger that you get in a store, stuffed into a tight, snapping white box, and dumped into a brown paper bag. The two don’t match, but that’s okay since the story is what consumers buy into. Should it be?
Compare Maccas to Save The Children, a charitable organisation that, (well, how else can I say it?) want to save children from hunger, sickness, disease, and many other issues. What Save The Children want from people is a small, monthly contribution of $20. Unlike Maccas, their advertising and website tell the truth – images of children and babies suffering through terrible conditions are the majority of what you see and read about. It’s heart-breaking. Is it possible they can tell a story that is more powerful and motivational than the truth? After all, what’s the story you tell yourself about $20 per month?
Two Save The Children ambassadors knocked on my door a few weeks ago. The truth is I said no, I wouldn’t help. Maybe it was the inconvenience of filling out forms and giving bank details to strangers, or perhaps I’m just a shitbag? But it is what it is, and the truth hurts me.
In the world of advertising, the story and the truth should always be the same, but they’re often not – that’s the truth. What right does any business have to lie to consumers and why is the vast majority so willing to absolutely accept the story?
As an advertiser, where does the line stop between telling a manipulative story versus going out there and spreading the power of the truth?
Westpac - a wolf in sheep's clothing
Westpac Bank made a $583 million profit in six months between 2020 & 2021.
Just like all banks, Westpac isn’t there to make friends – they’re in the business of making money.
Banks are a grudge purchase. Banks all offer 99% identical services, interest rates, account structures, and so forth. What they don’t offer is the same people. As I’ve said lots of times before, “people do business with people”. If the bank is the cold, cement heart of the organisation, then their people present the fluffy outer-shell disguise. And it’s this polarisation that makes everything quite uneasy, which is why banks spend a fortune on advertising designed to increase likeability.
When it comes to advertising, banks only have three approaches:
glorify the bank
glorify their people
glorify their customers
ASB is doing a great job with their current advertising campaign involving the Big Guy and his Mrs and their ducks, so Westpac couldn’t go that route or they’d be seen as copycats. Or so I thought. What they did was glorify the bank and glorify their customers. Why do one when two is better?
Westpac’s latest advertising campaign, entitled “Together Greater”, is a prime example of “Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing” advertising that the banking industry is notorious for. It’s beautifully shot, well-produced, and the story’s easy enough to understand – the girl gets bullied until the helpful monster sorts everything out. Cut to the logo. Upload to YouTube and get a million-plus views. Job done.
But it’s not that simple. When you analyse the ad, you can see a lot of weird stuff floating just below the surface. There is deep meaning at play here.
NZ Blood's Latest Advertising Campaign
The new TV ad for NZ Blood broke last night.
It was a series of 7 adverts shown during the TVNZ news slot, between 6pm and 7pm, 9 August 2020. There are a few things right and wrong with it.
NZ Blood’s Latest Advertising Campaign, “Unseen Emergencies”.
Right. Everything is set in real time, and that’s very absorbing. Very smart use of the media and the timing when each advert flies. It must have taken some immense work to get that done.
Wrong. It requires viewers to see most, if not all, of the ad string to be fully immersed in the message and the creative process. It’s an issue of attention span, and of all the spans, that is the worst to maintain.
Wrong. Expensive AF. Obviously, the media buying agency has a great rapport with TVNZ’s media department, but still, the entire ad set is 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Off the top of my head, I’d estimate the rate card cost of a 30-second ad during prime time news to be approx. $15k. So that’s about 75k for the campaign in one night. Plus, there’d be loading for the exact timing when the ads play.
Right. Can you imagine controlling TVNZ’s entire news broadcast around your ad campaign? That’s the power of advertising.
Right. There’s the planning of the entire campaign. The logistics are just insane. Before the ads were even filmed, NZ Blood needed to know exactly when TVNZ news would break for a commercial and have agreements in place and whatnot. Whoever was in charge of that deserves a medal of some sort.
Right. The production of the commercial is brilliant. It really is. Top-class directing, great cast, and some great acting.
Wrong. Expensive AF, part two. I’m not sure where to start estimating the production cost, but it’s going to be high. Could the money for production and media be combined to be used elsewhere for a better cause?
Wrong. Will they fly the ad on a regular basis? If so, that’s more media spending. And once you’ve seen the ending, well, that’s the ballgame.
Wrong. We’re given the impression that the baby may (most likely) die. The final scene of the mom wailing as her newborn baby is off-screen is heart-wrenching, and we are ambiguous as to its fate. It’s a horrible ending. Resorting to guilt is the least classy way to approach most situations – and the campaign’s payoff line “don’t wait to save a life” has Guilt Trip 101 written all over it. It’s a manipulative tactic and let’s face it, no one wants to be manipulated into doing anything.
Right. Brave AF. Who ends a commercial like that? I can imagine a lot of thought went into the ending of the commercial, and there was much debate among the client and agency as to whether there should be a positive or negative ending. In the end, they went with shock value. Does that work here?
Ultimately, the success of this campaign, as with every single piece of advertising, lies in the results. More people donating blood and plasma is the only measurement – the campaign’s ability to change the status quo lies here.
Advertising during slow times.
Let’s face it – slow periods are inevitable in business, and it’s often the time when you cut costs around advertising. “DIYs all around! Let’s leave the rest of the year’s budget for the big ad campaign.” After all, 97% of all New Zealand businesses classify as small or medium enterprises – and you say you “don’t have the budget to advertise when it’s not busy”, or in simpler terms, “it’s too risky”.
Let’s face it – slow periods are inevitable in business, and it’s often the time when businesses cut costs around advertising.
Advertising is risky for many things, but it’s a risk worth taking, especially in slow periods. A good advertiser would take slow periods as a cue to plan for their anticipated up-time. A better advertiser would be consistent and advertise during quiet times as well as busy periods.
After all, 97% of all New Zealand businesses classify as small or medium enterprises – and you say you “don’t have the budget to advertise when it’s not busy”, or in simpler terms, “it’s too risky”.
Before we dive deeper into things, let me just say this; this is free advice. Advertising and marketing is our craft, and we love seeing good advertising. So let me start by saying this – no risk means no reward.
The age-old saying, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” is an excellent place to start in terms of explaining the risk we’re talking about. However, the other side of the coin is the “half that worked” – the part of advertising that produces results. That’s just the thing! When advertising is done right, it works (and in some cases, even when it’s not done right, it works – I’m pretty sure that’s where the saying, “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” came from). So perhaps there’s less risk than you thought – or even that taking no risk is the riskiest thing you can do.
But, of course, you have limited resources, so you try to be smart about your spending – in turn, your content is DIY half of the time. There’s nothing wrong with doing things yourself once in a while – but it shows. So the question now is: do you value your business enough to care about the “small things”.
No matter what your primary motivation is – your business, your team, or your product – caring about the small things mean:
building a worthwhile brand for your business,
providing your team tools (like something as simple as a business card they can be proud of) that empower and motivate them,
and giving your product the attention to detail it deserves (even if it means proofreading labels and copy twice more than usual).
All of which can be done during slow periods or all-year-round even. Advertising during slow times gives you the most precious real estate your business can get – your target market’s top-of-mind. Your competitors would have to catch up to you since they didn’t take the risk – don’t let it be the other way around.
Remember: advertising’s purpose is to build, empower, and launch your business to greater heights to produce results. Advertising during slow times gives you a better foundation and leverage for your busy period. You won’t have to start from scratch, and with good, self-less advertising.
There’s a time and place for everything, and the time for advertising is always. Sure, there are budget restrictions, but investing in good advertising is something your business should invest in simply because it can produce the results you’re after and more when done right and done with care.