Archives for December 20, 2010

While everyone else is recession minded and shutting down production, you’re going to be planting the seeds for growth.

I was working with a client in Berlin who mentioned that they just landed a TV advertising deal where they don’t pay any fixed advertising fees. Instead, they negotiated a revenue-share deal with the TV station where they make a bit of money off of each new client their TV ads generate.

Remember, advertising outlets like TV, radio, magazines, newspapers and websites have no hard costs to run your ad.  For TV and radio, it’s airtime.  For magazines and newspapers, it’s a piece of paper they have to print anyway (one piece of paper in a magazine ends up being four full page ads and a staple in the middle).  Often, and especially now, magazines will run ads for free or very cheap if they are going to print the next day. Any unsold ad space in newspapers can never be re-sold.  Once Tuesday’s issue goes to print, it’s over for that specific window of sales potential.  It’s not as if it were a bottle of wine they are selling, which if not sold today, they can always sell tomorrow.

All media outlets have expiring inventory and they will sell their space for whatever they can negotiate as a price for at that time.

Years ago, I ran a very large barter company and we had tons of clients in advertising.  They would all trade advertising space for products from other companies.  All those ads you see in magazines for golf courses and hotels were not paid for with cash.  They were all paid for by the golf course trading twenty, fifty, or one hundred green fees in exchange for the ad. What about the hotel advertised on page 2? About ten to twenty nights in a hotel room for the ad.  It doesn’t cost a golf course anything to trade green fees except the cost of a scorecard and pencil–the golf course and hotel room will still be there the next day to re-sell to someone paying cash.  If you can trade your products or services with the media, they’ll turn around and re-sell it for cash to their clients later, too.

Don’t be afraid to negotiate the price, too; all advertising gets cheaper the closer it is to the date or time the ad will run, as I mentioned earlier.  I’ve negotiated millions of dollars of radio and TV ads, which were “pre-emptable.” We got them for fifty percent off, but if someone else came along willing to pay full price they’d cancel our ads. “Great,” I’d say. “I’m building a brand for years to come – I’ll take as many 50% off ads as I can get.” Someone else can pay full price.

I live by an old adage that always helps me through downturns:
“Early to bed, early to rise. Work like hell and advertise…”

pic Por Homme