Thursday + Gregory Huffstutter = The Ad Man Answers
Q: What is the most creative advertising trick you’ve ever seen?
A: Back when the Ad Man was a newbie and working on the Los Angeles McDonald’s franchise business, his boss – the agency’s media director – had a brilliant idea.
This media director noticed that TV stations were spending more and more airtime to promote their shows. As hard it is to sell a burger in health-conscious city like LA, it became even harder for the TV stations to break thru their own clutter to let their viewers know ‘Law & Order’ was moving to a new day and time.
Watching all this commercial inventory converting to internal promotion, our media director said: “I want in on that.” And because she controlled one of the largest accounts in LA, the stations reluctantly listened to her.
This is how she positioned it: You TV networks are going to spend the money and time to pump up your shows no matter what, but do you need all 30-seconds to do it? I’ll give a higher share of my TV budget to anyone who is willing to incorporate my message into their promo time.
She proposed trimming 5-10 seconds out of their promo spot, then pairing that with a McDonald’s mention, making it a “Promercial.” This was possible because Mickey D’s already had universal brand recognition, and only needed to get across short, easy-to-understand taglines like “2 for $2 Fish Fillet Fridays.”
Suddenly, instead of running a couple hundred commercials a month, McDonald’s was getting thousands of additional on-air mentions, without spending any extra money. The TV stations that ran the most Promercials got higher shares of the normal commercial time, which we were going to spend anyway.
Best of all – from McDonald’s point of view – it came across like they were actually sponsoring the content, even though they had nothing to do with the creation of the associated program. This ‘rub-off’ effect is even more pronounced when the product offering is similar to the content. Like Wolverine work boots being partnered with History Channel’s “Ice Road Truckers.”
You see these Promercials – also called “enhanced tune-ins” – all the time now. With the advent of TiVO, getting your commercial message integrated with desirable content helps prevent skipping.
Here’s one from featuring Suzuki Automotive ‘sponsoring’ TBS’s slate of comedies:
Download EnhancedTagSuzukiRev.mov
Typically, an advertiser has to spend a boatload of money in order to qualify for these sponsorships. But if you’re a book author, you can try using the same strategy on a smaller scale.
Let’s say you hear that your publisher is going to purchase a full-page ad in the Thrillerfest program to congratulate one of their authors nominated for “Best Paperback Original.” Instead of getting pissed they’re spending money to pump up someone else, why not pose this question… “Hey, since you were already planning to buy it, how about you let me buy 1/5th of that page? That way you save a little money, and I piggy-back on your existing ad.”
From the readers’ perspective, there is very little difference between a full-page ad compared to one that dominates 4/5th of a page. From the publisher’s perspective, they have a little more budget to spend somewhere else. From your perspective, you’ve just scored an adjacency next to someone in your publishing house being feted for best PBO… giving an implied endorsement that your book is worthy of similar consideration, and you have the backing of your publisher.
That’s a piggy-back worth squealing about.
Gregory Huffstutter has been punching Ad Agency timecards for the past decade, working on accounts like McDonald's, KIA Motors, and the San Diego Padres. He recently finished his first mystery, KATZ CRADLE and is currently on submission. The first 100 pages of his novel are linked here. For general advertising questions, leave a comment or send e-mail to katz @ gregoryhuffstutter dot com with 'Ask The Ad Man' in the subject line.
Great column!!!!!!
Posted by: MJ | July 03, 2008 at 07:35 AM