Know-How Exchange : Advertising/PR

I guess one question that should come first is "Why a TV commercial?" Does your target audience watch a lot of television? Is that the best medium for your marketing objective? What other marketing elements do you use? Is TV part of an integrated campaign, or do you expect it to stand pretty much alone/on its own?

mgoodman: My target audience would be individuals pre-teen thru adults interested in the performing arts, i.e, acting, singing, and dance. The commercial would run locally in the NYC Metro Area. I had decided to do TV Commercials for a variety of reasons. 1. The mother is usually the decision maker in sending their child to a performing arts school. 2. Print ads have proven unsuccessful in the past. I am not opposed to integrating the commercial along with our website. Our web presence is there and we are working on making it stronger.

Moriarty: I agree 100 percent with your comment, it has to be something that is fun and people want to watch. A strong plus to this is that our training center is a SAG-Signatory (Screen Actors Guild), and as such, if we utilize our students in the commercial, they can receive their first waiver to join the Actors Union. There are aspiring actors who work many years without receiving one.

Good morning John,

I'd like to address a few of the things you've said to me and the others. Because marketing and advertising is an extremely subtle business that requires an enormous amount of insight.

Now my business is direct marketing, and whilst this is a dusty, forgotten corner of the business for most, it is also the most effective. I'm not going to bore you with the details save to say that it requires an understanding of psychology that goes well beyond the kind of research that's current at most universities. The point of saying this is to point out a few simple things to you that will make your advertisement effective.

Which is the point, after all.

I'm going to address something that Gary's said - because he's right. "Standard length commercials may also lack the kind of scope needed to help you tell a compelling story" - so use a trick from the copywriters: have a teaser advertisement with a QR code that allows them to watch more on Youtube with their smartphone - that's when you can have an entire 2 to 10 minute followup. If you get really clever you can have a mini-series of 5 or 10 second episodes on TV that stands by itself - and the backup videos will fluff it out (as it were) add dimension and an entirely different plot! However, it would take some devious thinking - but now you know why Brian called me Moriarty.

I appreciate the idea that your students will get the accreditation for this work - that is fantastic! And it's all the more reason to get this right from the word go. It's also an exceptionally strong advertising "hook" to get people to get in touch with you.

So let's turn to the content and something you said above. You mentioned that your print ads didn't work. I'd like to know why. As mentioned above, the psychology required for marketing is profound. In fact it's childishly simple - and is why university professors get their socks tangled trying to understand the concepts involved. I come from a family of academics, so I've had a lot of practice.

The issue here is direct marketing, and testing small campaigns before doing anything else. That goes for video, copywriting, headlines or taglines. Anything. Because building a campaign that is going to be successful on TV is no easy matter. It's rather more than just shooting an ad and hoping for the best.

Because you actually need to get your print advertising right FIRST and then the TV ads. You need to know what message your audience responds to, and by respond, I mean results. That means actions - ticks on postcards, clicks on links, someone picks up the phone. It's all trackable if you get clever (and as I say, that's why I'm an honorary member of the esteemed Moriarty family). There are very simple ways to determine this, and using creative headlines you'll find one that "clicks" - and the point is that not one person knows the answer. Not me, not you, and most certainly not your principal. It's a matter of collecting all the results from your audience.

If this interests you, I have a series of emails that goes into this in detail. This forms part of my own direct marketing activities, but my ads run down-under so you'd not get to see them.

On your landing page you can test headlines along with videos. Videos are fantastic for landing pages, by the way. You'll need several that have themes that are totally different - and of course headlines to go with them. Google search (PPC) is good for this - but paid Facebook advertising would be FANTASTIC. The new advertising platform has been running for a year in the US (and we poor folk in Europe haven't got a sniff of it yet!) the things you can learn about your audience is incredible. Remember that youngsters use Facebook and will respond to good quality advertising - and send their favorites to each other - also via Twitter (that comes later). Their parents will also be on Facebook - and speaking to the right ones means having an effective campaign that's highly targeted. You'll be able to find out what works (and what doesn't) in a matter of weeks and it'll cost you a lot less than the cost of a single 10s ad on the TV.

Don't forget that direct marketing activities of this kind will allow you find out WHERE your ads are working. Sure, metro NYC - my bet is that a lot of kids would love to study in NY and come from Kentucky, California - even South Africa and the UK. Facebook advertising would do this for you at a cost that is modest, and would give you ideas for running TV ads in different metro areas - the point is to find out where this is first.

Get it right from the start and everything follows. I can recommend Keith Kranc for his skills in using the Facebook advertising platform.

Moriarty: I found your response most insightful and helpful. I will admit, the main reason why I come here for ideas is because when it comes to Marketing, I can be completely clueless. I should explain in a little more detail my plight. My school gives hundreds of thousands of dollars in scholarships to talented youth who would never be able to afford professional training by any other means, so my profit margin is extremely low. Our clientele is 80 percent Hispanic. Two years ago, I ran a print ad in a major newspaper that cost me approximately $1500.00. I received 2 telephone calls from that ad. I decided to take the print ad and run a tv commercial on a Hispanic tv station using the exact same wording that was in the print ad, not one change was made, an astonishing 70 calls were made each time the commercials aired. The ads on the tv station ran at a cost of $150.00 only 10% of what I spent on the print ad. I am now in a position where a major NYC Hispanic tv station has made an offer to run commercials for my school at an unbelievable rate...$15.00 for a :30 and $30.00 for a 60 second spot on whatever time slot I choose. They are doing this because they know I have been offering a program trying to assist the Hispanic community by offering prices that cannot be found elsewhere. I am offering a 4 hour program: 1 hour acting with a professional Hollywood actor, 1 hour singing with a Grammy winning artist, 1 hour of etiquette, and 1 hour of dance with a choreographer that trains Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Usher, and many others, and I am doing this for $75 for all 4 hours in Manhattan. I would like to utilize the fact that I can help the students by giving them a taste of what its like to be in a commercial and at the same time give them a first step towards the waivers that they need in order to join the union. I hope I didn't ramble on, but I think I explained it a bit more in detail now.

Wow! That's an amazing deal to get - and well done for getting serious results. The kind of response you got from your ad is probably an industry record. Tell me: did anybody say that they'd been called from the kitchen to see the ads? That's the "grail" for a TV ad. It's the grail for marketing too ...

The fundamentals of my idea still stands: get the ideas to meet the market first. Sure, it's not such a bargain as before, but the internet is still VERY fast at getting you responses as to what your audience likes. TV ads are notorious for being difficult to measure - not in your case - but getting the ideas and imagery just right is difficult. I'm just trying to make sure your ads are that 10% better that really make them zing-zing-zing. Bear in mind that I've not met you; I've worked as an industrial designer with some of the best guys on the planet, and they just "knew" what was truly classy. You might be in that category, so if you are please understand that you're a very rare creature.

Just as a completely different direction - have you thought of becoming a professional TV advertising studio? You have young graduates who are eligible to do this, you could drum up your own work too (internet advertising would work very nicely for this). You'd make some money and support the school from the profits. Are there any Hispanic studios around your area? If there aren't, I'll bet there are some businesses who'd love to use you.