I can remember sitting at my desk at WISH-TV in Indianapolis trying to figure out how to make my radio spots stand out.
All radio commercials for local news stations sounded the same, still do in fact. They are typically all about some big investigation or consumer news that's coming up tonight. They have unmistakable "news music," a bold announcer (or maybe your recognizable anchor man), some "sound bites" from the upcoming story, and a tag that says "Tonight at 6." If you were not listening carefully enough (and how many listeners really do?) to hear which station was mentioned in the copy, you could have assumed it was for any station in town. No differentiation.
So how do you stand out? I listened to the radio back then and heard a lot of expensive, slickly produced spots. It's no different today. You hear big budget productions. Custom jingles and clever lyrics. Multiple voices, all well directed. Sound effects. The works.
And I, of course, had no budget.
I figured that if I tried to compete with the high production value of so many spots and fell short due to lack of budget and experience, our spots would be completely ignorable, useless. So I turned it around and went to the other extreme. We went low-production.
Our spots were written in everyday, conversational language, complete with "um's" and "ya know's." They showed no particular concern for proper grammar and sounded nothing remotely similar to "ad-speak." They were read by an announcer who I repeatedly instructed to forget that he was an announcer. I wanted him to sound like his brother. And that's what we ran. No music. No effects. No bold announcers saying "Tonight at 6!" Just a little talk about a story coming up that our guy thought sounded interesting.
And it worked. Our spots did stand out. They sounded like nothing else on the air and they were believable due to their frankness. I heard from every radio person in town who told me our spots were the topic of discussion at their stations, how different our spots were, how they felt they were so effective. High praise.
Fast forward to today. You ever hear of Oyster.com? It a 2-year old travel website that gives honest reviews of hotels and helps you book your rooms. They are a young "David" taken on some well established "Goliaths." And they're taking a refreshingly simple approach with their very first television campaign.
No announcer. No luscious vacation video. Just cool music and type on a plain background, the message sharp, witty, and sarcastic.
I love this work! Read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/business/media/oystercom-sells-travel-with-words-not-pictures.html?_r=1
The point of all this? We all love to work with big budgets regardless of the medium. From television to direct mail to online banners, we love to go big and splashy and bemoan the fact that we can't when we can't. But the lack of a budget can never be an excuse for ineffective marketing.
Never.
No comments:
Post a Comment