Family owned and operated.

Posted on March 8, 2008
Filed Under copywriting, radio advertising, television advertising | Leave a Comment

Low, low prices! Locally owned and operated for over 50 years. “Come see the good folks at”… “Family owned”

I don’t know about you but I’ve been hearing this junk every day for years and it’s starting to annoy me. Folks, these lines don’t qualify as advertising copy. Low, low prices, yeah that’s real unique. Locally owned and operated, not unique not selling and does anyone really care. Same goes for “family owned”. Maybe my favorite ode to the total waste of precious advertising time and space is “come see the ‘good folks’ at… “. That’s real compelling.

I live in Austin, Texas where the average cost of a: 60 radio spot that reaches ten thousand people is about $120. So businesses that run radio commercials that read like this, “Come see the good folks at Car Country. Locally owned and operated for over 50 years we have the lowest prices in town”, waste approximately $12 every time it airs because the copy doesn’t get your attention and doesn’t give you a reason to buy their product or service. If a college advertising student turned in an assignment with this kind of copy writing she would get an F. There is no USP, unique selling proposition.

Would this get your attention? “We don’t have low prices, we’re not family owned, we’re not locally owned and we certainly don’t have any good folks to come see”. I know I would listen to the rest of the message and if the product or service being sold had any value to me at all I would go visit the good folks who had the nerve to get my attention.

Do it yourself media buying

Posted on March 6, 2008
Filed Under Media Buying | Leave a Comment

Some advertisers are paying much higher rates than others for the identical programming on local television and radio. This is not always because advertisers with large budgets have greater leverage or buying power than small budget advertisers. Most often it’s because some advertisers have professional media buyers and some don’t. Advertisers with small budgets can get rates just as low as the biggest spender in town if a pro is buying their media.

Small businesses that advertise on television or radio without the advice of a professional media buyer are almost certainly wasting money. If you don’t have long term media buying experience and you’re not shopping, buying and negotiating media buys on a routine basis you can’t know everything you need to know to make efficient buys.

Most media rates are highly negotiable. I don’t care how nice a person your media salesperson is. Their job is to sell each and every spot for the highest rate possible. Simply demanding lower rates or holding out until they offer a lower rate isn’t all there is to it. Professional buyers know what rates are negotiable and when they’re negotiable. A buyer who is in the market every day can identify nooks and crannies in ad inventory where demand has not caught up to value.

As the owner of an advertising agency that specializes in local television and radio advertising I call on small businesses to solicit new clients. One of the most common objections I encounter is, “we’re a small business and we can’t afford an agency”. Or, “won’t it be more expensive to buy through a middle man?”

The answer to both objections is that the most expensive way to advertise on television and radio is to not use a professional buyer to purchase your airtime. Not only that, but if you hire a professional to do your buying you have the shortest, easiest and most effective blow off line to the many pesky media salespeople who will call you once you start advertising. “Call my agency”

Beware of the “Cable Package”

Posted on March 4, 2008
Filed Under Cable Television Advertising, Media Buying, television advertising | Leave a Comment

If you’re considering advertising on television in your local market you’re probably going to check out cable. When you talk to the sales person beware of “packages”.

I sold local cable television advertising for ten years and have been buying it for six years as the owner of Frink Inc. Advertising. I’m a cable television advertising advocate. With that being said I can tell you that the primary motivation for the local cable operator to sell packages is to unload inventory for which there is little demand.

The packages are designed to entice you with incredibly low spot rates. The usual technique is to group various networks together and offer them on a Monday-Sunday 6am – 12midnight basis. Recently I saw a cable package billed as targeting men. It grouped nine networks together including National Geographic, Sci-Fi, FX, and TNT among others and offered them on M-F 6am-6pm basis. M-F 6am-6pm which means no spots will run in primetime and no spots will run on the weekend when most of daytime viewing occurs. The spots were $3 each. Wow what a deal right? Not really. How many men watch the Sci-Fi channel or FX at 9 am on Tuesday morning?

Sports packages are also popular. College football and basketball packages that might include hundreds of games are merchandised with average spot rates of $50 to $75. These are usually bad deals because they include dozens of Division II games that only girlfriends and relatives will be watching.

You don’t need or want to buy a package to make a good cable buy. You do need to be able to; 1. Clearly define your target prospects, 2. Identify what they’re watching and 3. Know the cable vendor’s pressure points.

With a little thought you can probably handle #1 on your own. A good cable sales representative might be able to help you with #2. A good sales rep. isn’t going to help you with #3.

Your best bet is to seek the advice of an independent advertising professional. A good one will save you time and money.

“You got to have a gimmick”

Posted on March 3, 2008
Filed Under Branding/positioning | Leave a Comment

Frink you got to have a gimmick”. That was the advice given to me on how to get women from Andy, one of my college roommates. I didn’t realize it at the time and though I was in my third year in college as an advertising major it was my first lesson in branding and positioning. Andy’s gimmick was to take on the persona of the “charming hick”. Andy was a very bright guy from Beaumont, Texas. He was well read. There were few topics he couldn’t converse with you on. He graduated from The University of Texas with an accounting degree and a 3.5 grade point average. Yet he methodically and consistently over a period of four years cultivated his image as a hick.

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 room mate the “Charming hick”.

What’s your business’ “gimmick” i.e. your position versus your competition? 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 a long time” 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”.

We’ll produce your television commercial for free!

Posted on February 29, 2008
Filed Under Cable Television Advertising, Television Commercial, television advertising | Leave a Comment

For the last 16 years I’ve been in the local television advertising business. First as television advertising account executive for eleven years (I sold airtime).  Now I own an advertising agency that creates local television advertising campaigns.  A local television advertising issue that I’ve dealt with daily for 16 years is “free production”. Free production meaning an advertiser gets a television station or the local cable operator to produce their television commercial for free in exchange for an airtime purchase.

I think it’s a lousy short sighted business practice for both sides of the exchange.  But it’s especially misguided for the advertiser. Think about it.  For a business that advertises on television, their commercial is their image.  Their commercial is the most important business presentation they will make.  In terms of sales and marketing their commercial is everything.

Do you get your haircut for free at the barber college?  Do you buy a suit for the big job interview at the second hand shop?  I’m guessing probably not.  Then why would a business go to the “barber college” of advertising production to create its’ image?  It’s not hard pick out the commercials you see on television that were produced for “free”.  We laugh at those commercials all the time.

Bottom line the businesses that go for the “free production” aren’t really saving any money.  What they’re doing is wasting a significant percentage of their airtime investment presenting a cheap image of themselves to their prospects and customers.

If you’re going to advertise on television hire professionals to write and produce your commercials. Then devote a significant amount of your time communicating to them what’s special about your business and its’ products and services.

After you’ve hired professional script writers and producers you should also delegate the purchase of your airtime to media buying professionals. But if you find yourself negotiating a media buy tell the sales rep that you since you aren’t using their free production you want to be compensated for the production services you’re not using with equal value on their airtime rates.