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"A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain't got nothin'."
That seems like a pretty good formula: involvement, relevancy, noticed and believed. Here's what Bryan Stapp, vice president of marketing at Quicken Loans, has to say in this month's issue of CMO magazine:
My radio sales rep is very excited that he got me 208 million impressions (noticed)—worth more than $1 million—as a make-good on my $200,000 radio buy. My interactive agency is submitting our company's Web campaign for an award because it got more than 150,000 brand interactions (involvement) in a two-day period. Terrific branding. But I want to know where my leads are!
Brian wants relevance and belief. He goes on to say:
Selling media reps on the idea that every dollar needs to return a profit—and that every ad needs to pay for itself—really isn't that hard. They get it. They appreciate the detailed tracking we do and our willingness to share the data with them. They know that when we find something that works, I am happy to write them big checks every month as long as they keep performing.
The problem is that it's so much easier for media reps to sell the same inventory I want to buy to a brand advertiser, who holds them to a very different standard. Who can blame them? How much easier is it to have lunch with some agency guys, run some numbers by them, pretend to negotiate, agree to split the difference and be done by 3 o'clock?
How long do you think this low-hanging, brand advertiser fruit will last for media sales reps? Years? Read the entire article: click here.
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Tom is timely, thought provoking and all about the new brand vision packaged as a Seinfeld stand up. I went to school on his ideas.
Jeff Taylor, Founder, Monster.com and CEO, Eons.
In times past, advertising may have been the most cost effective way to build a brand. Today, a brand has to be innovative, relevant and different long before you can even think about advertising it.
No amount of ‘supersize me’ ads will make someone buy something that they do not want. Why waste all the creativity on the advertising if there is no creativity in the offer?
Gone are the days when you could rely on clever communication alone to save the day. I would argue that innovation has a more powerful effect when applied to the product offer AND the communications.
If your offer is not innovative you'll find that in spite of all the money you are wasting on advertising, you aren't getting leads, the buyer sets the price and you are in parity land.
Posted by: Ren Spiteri | August 25, 2005 at 03:49 PM