Do you like to gamble?  I’m not much of a gambler.  Occasionally I’m dumb enough to play the lottery.  I know it is hard to believe but I didn’t win the lottery….again.  I thought I’d try to win without playing my kids birthdates for once. Oh well.

I don’t  play every weekend.  I’ve gambled on the lottery maybe ten times in the last ten years. I don’t feel bad about it.  Five bucks now and then has about as much chance of paying off as money invested on Wall Street.

We all used to believe that we had to have a portfolio of investments.  Many of my friends and family saw their investments disappear. We’re in baffling times.

More baffling to me is why companies gamble on commercials they put on TV. Especially now, when every dollar really counts ! Judging from the ads, these companies skip all the vital steps  to making an effective TV commercial and then wonder why the TV ad doesn’t pull leads.

What do I mean by vital steps?  Well for one thing, know your target audience, thoroughly. Not just the demographic.  Know what imagery they’re receptive to. Know what they “think” about products or services similar to yours.  Know what about your product or service they will respond to positively. Know what emotion your target audience is sitting in. Know what words and phrases they agree with. These are just a few of the things we research.

If you don’t know these things before beginning the creative part of making a TV commercial, you’re going to miss your target audience. You’ll disconnect with your audience to a greater or lesser degree.  Like the guys who marketed the Chevy Nova in South America, where “No Va” means “won’t go”. Duh.

Here’s another example.  We’ve had a client come to us with a natural product  which alleviates discomfort during menstrual cycles.   Some “expert” agency gave them the name “Klimadynon”.  The client was from Germany.  They didn’t know that Americans would position this name with a dinosaur. They didn’t know their audience. We tested some alternate names and renamed the product so it didn’t communicate that it was for women who act sort of like a dinosaur monthly.

How does this apply to you? Well, if you don’t know your audience chances are you’re wasting your marketing budget.  You’re not just losing sales, you may be driving clients away.   If you don’t know your target audience you’ve reduced the chance of your ad being effective by 70% or more.

This is fine for some evil ad agencies who would love for you to keep trying and trying to reach your target audience.  The more you try the more they make.

It’s like playing darts blindfolded. If you can’t see the target how do expect to hit a bull’s eye?

We see advertisements on TV all the time that miss the target audience. They don’t cause the phone to ring.  The sponsor has wasted his money.

Is there a better way?  You bet ! We’ve used it for years on our corporate clients and we started using it on our TV commercials.  It’s proven and scientific.  It takes the guesswork out of marketing.

All advertising is a gamble. Our proprietary methods will put the odds in your favor.

Otherwise, you may as well play the Lottery.  Your chance of winning is lousy but at least you’re not throwing away so much money.

A better way to go is to find out how we can help you win at marketing.  It’s a sure bet.

This is a series on marketing solutions. Often the simplest solution is the best. Here’s one you might find interesting.

Are you surrounded by people who just can’t keep themselves from making things as complex as possible? They’ve got this idea that for something to be worthwhile it MUST be complex and very hard.

We don’t work that way.  Hey.  It may be our experience or we just like to have fun or some of both.  We think there is always a way to get what you want simply and easily.

This Norm Taylor spot is a good example. It was a difficult TV commercial to do.  The storyboard called for a distraught woman in a car which had broken down at night on the freeway.  She almost gets hit a number of times.  Her car’s a lemon and, as the narrator says, she needs to call Norm Taylor to get her money back.

Well, as you may know, it costs a godzillion dollars to close a freeway, plus permits, traffic cops, firemen etc. Even renting a piece of asphalt big enough for background trucks and cars to zoom past in the background was pricey and we would have to rent a generator to fake the lights overhead.

So, we decided to shoot the foreground of the woman in the car against green screen and then marry it to a background shot of freeway traffic at night.

We thought it’d be fun to shoot a time lapse of the green screen shoot so we didn’t bore you to death.

We call the time lapse video “Gone in 60 Seconds”.

Our pro’s really did an excellent job.  Better than some of the green screen in Die Hard 3.   If you want to see the final spot, click the picture below.

Written by: Fletcher Murray of The Association

Fletcher Murray

This December we shot two spots simultaneously, both to be shown in Toys R’ Us stores. One was for the Little Tikes Outdoor Grill and the other was for the Little Tikes Mudpie Maker. We had a ball. Ten kids running wild making plastic hamburgers and real mud pies. Somehow Director Theresa Soullliere kept everything together and we got some very energetic spots out of the mayhem.

We’re smiling about a new set of TV spots we produced for local Lemon Law attorney, Norm Taylor. In their first run, the spots aired 5 times and produced 216 leads for Norm in the Los Angeles area.

So we averaged about 43 leads each time a spot ran.

The cost per lead (CPL) is at a low, low $13.88.   Amazing when you consider some law firms pay $350 and up for a lead!

How did we achieve these fantastic numbers?

Well, it starts with knowing the target audience.  Our research specialist, Tracy Locke, in her surveying of the target audience, discovered unbelievable intellectual AND emotional data.  Thus, our Creative Director, Rick Rogers could conceive TV spots that connect with the viewer not only on an intellectual level but on the emotional level, as well.

Connecting on an emotional level is what triggers people to take action. We motivated them emotionally and intellectually. The phone rang. It’s that simple.

If you want your phone to ring in 2010, if you want leads coming in the door, you’ve got to pick up the phone and call us.

Or email us at fletch@theassociation.tv.

Don’t let 2010 get the better of you. Take action right now.