The Media Rep vs. The Ad Agency

As a media rep, what is the thing you hate the most about working with some agencies? Or… As someone who works on the agency side, what is your biggest complaint about media account executives? 

I know for me, as an agency CEO, one thing that drives me crazy is an AE who doesn’t get back to you in a timely fashion.  There are reps that have to be called 5 times to get them to send a proposal and we are the ones who are getting ready to spend money with them!

I can remember one time, having a meeting with a client and a radio station well before the client’s consumer show event and as the meeting came to a close, the media rep actually said,

“hey, as we get closer to the event can one of you call to remind me to send you a proposal?”

It didn’t even occur to him that he may want to take some responsibility for remembering this.

The other thing that I get frustrated over is having reps give us a deal and then each time they lower the deal, getting us a better cost per thousand CPM, they say it is the “absolute best deal that they can offer”, until the find out that their competition is lower – then they lower it again.  Why can they just come up with the best deal to start with?

What drives you crazy as a buyer or seller of advertising?  What are things that you would like to change?

- Alan Beim

Art vs. Sales

Do you want your company to succeed?  Do you want to entertain people with your advertising, do something really creative, or do you want to use your advertising to increase profits?

We love to harp, with some passion, on large national advertisers who create ads that forget to sell the products.  We have written about products like Chatter.com that used the Black Eyed Peas to create ads. Even though the commercials were viewed by a lot of people, they did not even inform people as to what the product was they were selling.

Now, we want to offer our opinion on two really great national advertisers that even though they can bore people with their commercials, meanwhile they really can sell their products!  Two of those types of advertisers that do the type of advertising that our ad agency would create or recommend are Ford Trucks and Samuel Adams Beer.

Most likely you can not remember a single “Built Tough” Ford Truck ad if you tried and may not remember a single one of Boston Beer Company’s Founder Jim Koch’s commercials where he educates consumers about how his beer is brewed, but they really have sold.

Look at the Ford F-150 No-Nonsense Ad Campaign and then realize that according to Sunday May 1, 2011 Parade magazine the Ford F series trucks were the most sold Vehicles in the USA during 2010.

You may not remember hearing points about Samuel Adams Beer and the commercials that take the time to talk about how the beer is brewed.   Did you know that Boston Beer is ranked first overall in craft brewing and forth in over all beer sales?  Not bad for commercials that bore people. By the way, Anheuser-Busch’s 230 million dollar investment in Superbowl advertising alone in the past few years in addition to a whole lot of other entertaining ads does not seem to offer any magic to sales which dropped in past years.

What do you want for your company, to create art for the sake of art or to create art for the sake of sales?

Marketers Need To Adopt Multi-Channel Strategies For Reaching 2011 Families

With the 2010 census numbers out, there are numerous reports highlighting the decline of the traditional married family unit of previous decades.  Although this segment of the market is declining it still manages to outspend any other segment.

According to The Nielsen Company,  “The New Digital American Family is getting older, smaller, growing more slowly and becoming more ethnically diverse than at any point in history.  Diversity in all its dimensions defines the emerging American Family archetype, with no single cultural, social, demographic, economic or political point of view dominating the landscape”.  

Most families of today are internet savvy and research before making all sorts of purchasing decisions and more and more are buying online.  Additionally not everyone in the household is using the same devices to obtain information and to make purchases and they are doing this at different times of the day.   Purchases using smartphones have increased substantially in last year and will continue to increase across the board.   With smartphones becoming accessible across households of all income levels, marketers cannot ignore the importance of this emerging medium.   Tablets are not far behind and it will be essential for businesses to create smartphone and tablet applications

The Nielsen Company goes on to say,  “the age of anytime, anywhere, affordable access has arrived, a game-changer for marketers who now must learn to leverage the unique attribute of mobile into their campaign strategies”

The use of social media for connecting with this segment is also imperative.  It must be sincere and its goal must be to engage and not necessarily to sell.  Marketers concern is to add a value to the information and content used to create this connection and sustain it with engaging tools and by providing helpful & useful information.

…It must be REALLY good

Here is a strange, perhaps insane, (and at the same time funny), ad that is obviously working. (above)

A half page color ad in The San Francisco Chronicle is not cheap; they ran it around a month ago and again today. The ad is for a Sacramento Pot club, where the Chronicle recently stopped circulating their paper.  I rekon that when people see this ad, one reason it works is because they think, “Damn! Who ever did this ad was crazy! They must have smoked some of their own stuff and it must be REALLY good. I think I will go there and buy some!”

Alan Beim

Sports and Advertising Unite

So the biggest day in television advertising will soon be with us when advertisers across the country will premier what they think is their best work.   It’s the Superbowl!  There will be ads that are creative, ads that will sell and even ads that do not sell.  I will never forget a comment that I head at a Superbowl party several years ago:  That was the best ad I ever saw, I wonder what they were selling!

What ad did you see in the Superbowl that you loved?    What ads do you think did the best job of making sales and resulting profits for the client?  What ads to you think people will talk about the most?   What other comments to you want to offer for posterity on 2011 Superbowl ads?

Alan Beim