Cost of Advertising – Production and On Air-Time

[Simon Roughan]

Testify, Brother!
I spent a great deal of time and stress fighting with the sales on this exact point. Production has real, calculatable costs, where as air time is only a file in a playlist. One suffers at the cost of the other, because the sales people make commision just with air-time. its taking money out of the left pocket, and sticking it in the right. But the trousers still belong to the company.

A picture is only as good as the glass it comes through. And the person using the camera has something to do with it too.

[Richard Herd]

Funny you should ask.

Disclaimer: I can’t name names. Sorry.

HBS — colleagues of mine — hate advertising dollars (and I mean hate) because it’s so hard (he said “incommensurate”) to track actual ROI. It has been proven that Customer X saw the tv Ad and received the direct mail and also is friends with other customers (meaning they heard word of mouth). When you ask customer “how did you hear about us” they say “friend told me.” Yet it can be proven (via other data streams) that customer saw ad and received mail.

You’ll recognize this from another point of view, so let me say I’ve been reading your posts for quite some time and have profited well from it, so thank you! In return let me say…

You’ve said some if not many of your contacts (long term, familiar advertisers) were laid off and now you’re forced to work with newbies.

Here’s why, from an HBS analytical point of view.

It’s a better ROI to fire all the advertisers and retrain some employees as direct sales associates. That means, they make telemarketing phone calls.

Sorry it isn’t good news 🙁

[Todd Terry]

[Nick Griffin] “If ANYONE has any research as proof of this I’m sure lots of us would like to get our hands on it.”

Well, I didn’t say it was true, Nick… I just said that’s what we tell clients. 🙂

After all, we are in advertising, too….

But obviously we want them to put some of their money into creating a decent production, rather than bombarding the airways with crap. Not only because it’s how I make a living… but I don’t want to sit at home and watch the bad stuff either (and see it keeping the quality bar low).

T2

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Todd Terry
Creative Director
Fantastic Plastic Entertainment, Inc.
fantasticplastic.com

[Jim Lillis]

After many decades in the production business, I found that by completing the full circle of production/air-time buys, I had less %’s to worry about.

Produce the commercial with us, buy the air-time with/through us, everyone comes out as a winner then.

Do the math.
A 15% buy commission can do what to your production costs?

If it moves . . . Shoot it!