Out of everything we do, I think media buying would have to be one of the hardest services to communicate to clients. So often we hear stories of great opportunities to get a cheap advertisement or a package that contains 100 free bonus spots. It all sounds wonderful on the surface but do you really know what you’re getting for your money?
Explore our historical blog articles for nuggets of wisdom (and random musings) from our crew.
How do you evaluate placing an advertisement in your local paper, or any printed medium for that matter? My guess is that more often than not price is the deciding factor, but do you consider value for your money? Do you know how many people you are reaching with your dollar? Do you know whether another newspaper could have reached more people for the same amount of money? Do you know whether the publication is right for your target market? As the person charged with making this decision for many of our clients, let me pass on some wisdom for making better informed print
advertising decisions.
The power of colour is everywhere, and it influences our lives without us even knowing! It makes us hungry, angry, calm or happy. Many experiments have been conducted on the effect colour has on our emotions and feelings. And as designers and marketers we need to take this into account when we communicate to the consumer.
In terms of planning an advertising campaign, buying media is an art as much as it is a science – there are many variable which come in to play that determined the success, or potential for success of a campaign. The potency of any advertising campaign can be determined, if all other things being equal, by the reach and frequency of the execution. Most media campaigns start with a finite budget, where the reach and frequency of the media buy have to be weighed against each other to provide the optimal balance between the average number of people exposed at least once to the advertisement over a specific period of time and; the number of times the average person is exposed to the advertisement over a specific period of time. While a perfect balance is near impossible to achieve, the one Golden Rule to remember here is: reach without frequency = a waste of money. But there are always exceptions that break the rules!
Having recently been diagnosed with a cataract I can speak with some authority on visual impairment. “Through a glass darkly” is the perfect description of my visual capabilities at present, at least until the operation. It started me thinking about perceptual vision and how diagnostics work in a marketing sense.
The headline of this blog is a direct ‘pinch’ from the good old, New Testament book of Corinthians and its interpreted to mean, ‘humans have an imperfect perception of reality’. That’s also perfect for my story because so much of what marketing can do, hangs on seeing the challenge with a very clear focus. Get it wrong and the imperfect perception becomes an imperfect reality.
I’m sure you would have heard about this ‘best job in the world’ for Queensland Tourism. If not on the national news, then perhaps via You Tube, a news website, a national newspaper, travel magazine, or even the international news. If not via mainstream media, you might have heard it from a friend, gossiped about it at the coffee machine, or discussed it with colleagues. You might have even applied, just for fun. My point is, that you heard about it and passed it on to others. Qld Tourism achieved the ultimate aim in marketing, without spending millions. So what valuable lessons can we learn from this marketing brilliance?
Flowers, cards, chocolates, romance and love. Hallmarks (pardon the pun) of that special day in February. Valentine’s Day. Whether you’re into to it or not, the reality is it’s a huge opportunity if you’re in the right industry to take advantage of ‘the love’.