Bouncing Ideas Off Experienced Heads.

[Mark Suszko]

I liked number 2 and 3.

Number 3 will be expensive to shoot with all the various full-set backdrops, unless you scale it back to skip the green screen and just pop-in a costumed actor and one or two props for each magazine title that appears in the same original set.

Both of these spots could be entertaining, but you might want to step back for a minute and consider, more deeply, the overall strategy you’re trying to execute.

To start with, your client is fighting an uphill battle: delivering and picking up hard-copy paper magazines in 2013 is anachronistic in a world of e-books and cloud-delivered content. And for people that DO still like hard-copy magazines, they already subscribe directly, so where’s their incentive to switch? This sounds like a company and a service that is near the end of it’s practical existence, so one of the things your spot has to sell is WHY this is NOT an outmoded idea. If you can’t communicate that idea clearly in the spot, they may be entertaining, but they will fail in generating sales.

My other point on the strategy is, I don’t think you should be combining the appeal to professional doctors and dentists’s offices with an appeal to home consumers. These two demographics are not similar enough for any meaningful synergy. Thus, you’re diluting your message by splitting the attention and the sales points you’re trying to make. Do one spot specifically for waiting rooms, and a different one for the home-owner.

For a spot aimed directly at the Professional waiting room market, I would do something like this:

Patient arrives at dentist’s waiting room. It is full of historical figures from several years ago, or people wearing fashions that are out of date. Any conversations the patient has or overhears sound like they’ve taken a trip back in time. Our voice-over narrator comes in and explains that your customers hate stale-out-of-date magazines in their waiting rooms, but you can keep your business fresh thru this special service, etc. etc.

Frankly, this spot would work better in a direct-mail campaign, or as an insert ad in trade magazines read by doctors and dentists, rather than over broadcast TV, but that’s a separate discussion.

Back to the domestic home-owner campaign again: so, in your scripts, what is the overall subtext, the point to it? Remember, you’re supposedly making a value proposition: you’re showing why getting paper magazines is still useful, and why paying a third-party intermediary to collate and deliver/pick up these magazines is superior to direct subscriptions. As entertaining as script 2 and 3 are, they don’t yet tell that story to me.

Don’t fall in love with your creative imagery before you do the sales homework. Then you’re warping the sales message to fit into the creative narrative you love.

Concentrate first on a SUCCINCT argument for the value proposition, then apply the creative framework to how you tell that story.

For some hints on the overall process, please look over some of our “Save This Script!” episodes, right here on the COW. They talk a bit about how this kind of strategy works. The most recent one, number 4, in particular.

https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/99/862052

[Simon Roughan]

Wow, thanks for the fast reply Mark. You’re quick off the line!
Everything you’ve explained is true. I’ve already been over a lot of this with the customer. Concerning the waiting room business, that is already sewn up by this company. They want to concentrate on private homes. I also had concerns about the fact that the medium (hard copy magazines) is a dying one, but I don’t imagine it’s a sound strategy to tell a client that his business is on the way out 😉
Their advantage over normal subscriptions is the price. Its much cheaper through them.
The main strategy behind the spots, is just to get the name out there, in a memorable way. I tried and tried to incorporate some way of bringing across how cost effective the service was, while keeping in line with the rest of the brief they gave me. But they don’t want a sales pitch as such. I mean, what the hell does dancing babies on roller skates have to do with mineral water? Although I hate that spot, I can still recite the product name, so it’s successful.
BTW, for the green screen production, I work at a TV station, and have a big studio with a saturated lighting rig at my disposal. I thought about just buying good quality stock footage for the backgrounds.
Thanks for the support and the criticism, and I will read the “Save the Script!” episodes over the weekend.
Cheers
Simon

The more I learn, the more I realise how little I know.

[Mark Suszko]

I’m going to throw a couple of ideas at the wall to see if any of these stick…

How about a montage of scenes of the home’s front door opening, the company’s delivery-man is at the door just like a postman, but handing off the branded packaging to the husband and wife in each 4-to-7-frame shot, as they are dressed for different careers and activities, each radically different from the next. This will range from scuba gear to gardening and sports gear and racing suits etc. (Your major expense in this spot is all the costume changes). Voice-over narration says that thanks to the magazine company’s lower costs, you can afford to keep up with dozens and dozens of magazines, to cover all your interests, for less than you ever imagined. Now, your interests are free to be explored.

Some advantages in that approach are: the delivery man is in the shot with the branding the entire time. It makes it plain that you can get a LOT of magazines with a lot of variety. You only have one location, a front door stoop.

Here’s a follow-on idea that will re-cycle some of that montage footage:

Open on a rented local hall, decorated with signs that make it plain this is a local trivia tournament. A huge crowd is already in place when (dramatic music sting) A very unassuming, nerd-like man enters, and all activity ceases as every eye in the place turns to see him, reacting as if this was a wild west bar and the worst gunfighter of all has just entered. A few voices come through in recognition:
“iI’s Hans…
“Hans is here!”
“Hans!”

The trivia players all resign their tables in disgust and depart en-masse. Now you see signs in the background that Hans has won the contest a record number of times, a RIDICULOUS number of times… because:

HANS.
KNOWS.
EVERYTHING.

What’s his secret? What makes Hans unbeatable?

Cut to rapid montage of deliveries to his front door

the many magazines he gets each week covering all his varied interests. etc etc etc

A variation on how to shoot this is to just montage three or four instances of Hans being declared the trivia winner, victory upon victory upon victory, each time the crowd is smaller and less enthusiastic, until the fifth time he raises his trophy in victory and looks about, the room is mostly empty. Everyone has just given up because Hans is unbeatable.

…unbeatable because of the flood of knowledge he gets thru all his magazine subscriptions

In an epilog shot, a challenger appears in the backlit doorway of the hall. The challenger has a branded packet of magazines in hand from the same service.

To be continued…

You could milk this rivalry idea for several more follow-on spots, as the two mortal combatants challenge each other with obscure fact after obscure fact. Make a story arc out of it, maybe….

[Bill Davis]

Back up.

You’ve created scripts for what appear to be BRAND RECOGNITION spots.

This type of advertising can certainly build brand awareness, but it’s typically NOT designed to drive potential customers to any type of immediate profitable action.

If the client’s goal is to drive subscriptions – then you MUST find a way to make THAT the central “take away” idea of any spot you air.

The ad will cost hundreds or maybe thousands. The advertising placement will likely cost 10 (or 100!) times that.

Literally, a busty model in a T-shirt with the Magazine Name and a voiceover w/super that says “50% off new subscriptions for the next 200 web visitors” is MUCH more likely to net results than anything you’re doing with fancy “relationship visuals” that have little or nothing to do with the core objective of driving new subscriptions.

Define the action goal that the ads must produce FIRST – then relentlessly judge every single aspect of the ad through the lens of whether it helps – or doesn’t help – achieve that action result.

To do anything else is advertising malpractice, IMO.

FWIW.

Know someone who teaches video editing in elementary school, high school or college? Tell them to check out http://www.StartEditingNow.com – video editing curriculum complete with licensed practice content.

[Greg Ball]

I like the first spot best, but instead of them diving under the covers at the end to suggest that they are about to get it on, they slide out of the bottom of the covers with more magazines in hand.

[Simon Roughan]

Thanks Bill, you’ve also given me some things to think about. For example, advertising malpractice is a new term for me. You also have a lot of good points. This is why I made this post. Time after time, I’m put into the position of having to do the work of an agency, as well as a producer. I have a BA in communication studies, but naturally I have trouble to cover all the bases. At an agency, they can have a team of people sitting together for hours on end, working through the types of points you bring up, whereas I’m expected to just pull great ideas out of my beautifully sculptured posterior.

I have had a brief already from the client, and they have given me a direction they want to go in. They really just want a brand recognition spot. In my opinion, and I have the customer so advised, that for such a service/product, a 30 second TV/cinema spot is not enough to cover the information you would need to sell the subscriptions, without being dry and boring. The spot would be sucessfull if you just sparked enough interest to get web hits, where the nitty-gritty information can be read and absorbed at leisure.
A real person does the selling. In most cicumstances, a short TV ad can do nothing more than make someone aware that the product/service exists. Thats my opinion about TV advertising, anyway. Have you honestly ever in your life taken note of a telephone number from a TV ad, and made a call?
Thanks again for taking the time to reply,
Cheers
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Thanks for the feedback. Originally I had it ending with the couple just reading, but then I thought perhaps it gives the impression that too many magazines in the house ruins your sex life!

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Simon Roughan]

Thanks Mark. I find the first idea with the many different kinds of people opening the door to the delivery man a good one. Do you mind if I develop it a bit further that it fits more with the customers brief?
The second idea with the pub quiz scenario is a bit too complex, but entertaining all the same. They don’t really have pub quizzes as such here, so the concept might be a bit hard to grasp for them.
Thanks again for your input
Simon

You know I’m born to lose, and gambling is for fools, but that’s the way I like it, baby. I don’t want to live forever!

[Mark Suszko]

I did not know that trivia contests were not a popular thing in Germany; I would have thought they’d be big.

Go ahead and use any of what I posted that can help you.

Here’s a variation on your first spot idea:

Weekend and the couple is casually dressed for home lounging. Suggestive romantic teasing music rises in background. Scenes of the man and woman reading in separate locations of the home but giving each other somewhat suggestive and playful glances across the room over the tops of their respective magazines. They move to different rooms like the kitchen and den, etc. but the glances continue until the woman abruptly gets out of her chair and walks to the bedroom. Cut to foot of the bed, the blankets stirring, and both actors heads.upper bodies appear under the blankets, still clothed, (more or less) with magazines they are reading side-by-side under the covers.

[Tom Sefton]

Shots of different aged couples sat at home reading. Suggestive looks, eye flirting, rubbing of feet. They are reading GQ/Cosmo/sexy/fashion styled magazines with sex tips on front cover.

Woman suggests bed. Both agree.

She walks out followed by husband. Cue kissing.

Magazines are dropped onto sofas with quick cuts between different backgrounds. Each magazine flops open to reveal your clients magazine hidden inside?