[Nick Griffin]

Age discrimination… work ethics… 50 year olds unloading trucks with power lift gates… girls in short skirts hanging lights… global, big view versus micro-economics… anti-union… pro-union… WHAT A THREAD! (Or a Billy Joel song for those of you who can get an obscure reference to “We didn’t start the fire…”)

Seems to me like you guys have covered a lot of ground. And just when everything seems to be going in a few dozen directions at once something happens which adds a strange focus to at least some of it. I could NOT make this up, especially with the timing of happening just this morning, moments after reading through this thread.

My house needs some exterior painting done so for the past few days I’ve had a few painters and painting contractors stopping by to give quotes. The guy who was coming this morning from one of the national franchised painting companies had a name that seemed familiar, but I couldn’t seem to place it. He shows up at 8:00, as scheduled and the first thing out of his mouth was, “You may not remember me but I did some work for you several years ago in a past life.”

“Oh, yea,” I say, “NOW I know why I remember your name. You did some 3D and AfterEffects work as bumpers for a video for (blah, blah, blah) in the late nineties.”

“Well that work was pretty un-even,” he stated, “What with every kid in the world now able to do it on their home computer, so my wife and I started this other business.” Interesting since the reason we didn’t use him again was getting our own copy of AfterEffects and suite of plug-ins.

So here we are, eight or nine years later and the animator turned painting contractor is reviewing his estimate with me and giving me examples like, “We can do X kind of prep or Y kind of prep for this surface. Kind of like the choice between Premiere and Final Cut Pro, there’s no right or wrong way to get the same thing done.”

I think I need to go back inside, have another cup of coffee and clear my head. Would my life be simpler and more profitable if I was managing painters instead of corporate communications projects? Well, at least at age 56 I don’t have to unload any grip trucks — even ones with a power lift gate.

[Nick Griffin]

Okay David, Dean and Tim. Good to see that the thread has gone from ageism, skills and work ethics straight down into the gutter.

Problem with oogling girls is when they look straight at you and go, “Eewwww! What are YOU looking at? You’re my Dad’s age!”

Now stop being dirty old men and get back to the serious stuff… like… like… well, just get back to work.

[Nick Griffin]

I’m not anything close to an authority on this since I do corp/industrial these days and it’s been more than a decade since I’ve done spots, but maybe I can get you started.

Yes, you need a slate which gives all that stuff. Assume that your tape will be separated from the box and put all information on both.

TV :30’s are audio completely out at 29.5. You can hold video to :30 (or longer) since most places will automatically cut it off. Just don’t have anything happening after 29.5 or it will look like your spot was cut off prematurely.

One minute or more of bars and tones at the head are standard as this is what’s used to adjust your tape so it’s at the same levels, chroma, etc. as everything else on the station/channel.

Cable is CONSIDERABLY more casual about the legality of IRE and such like. Broadcast tends to be much more strict and for network there is nothing less than dead-on. That’s why you need a scope — a real one, not the pretend ones that are built into editing software. I believe that there are “real” scopes which are software-based, but they run on stand-alone computers, not as something just running in another window on your editing machine. I BELIEVE that DV Rack is one of these, but that’s where you need someone more knowledgeable than me to advise you.

The big thing being not having your whites exceed 100% by very much. That’s a BIG no no as it can tear the picture and cause noise in the audio. Blacks below the specified pedestal of 7.5 will block-up and look bad, but this is nowhere near as big a problem as whites over 100. Speaking of which, can’t you set “broadcast safe” in one of the output modules of your software? (I’m not familiar with Combustion, but that may be one of your options.)

If you are in doubt about what you are outputing ask the station/cable outlet to review your tape and advise you of any problems. This means that you should NOT wait to give them the tape until the cut-off period, usually 12 to 24 hours (if memory serves). Give them a few days and yourself a few more to make any needed changes.

Hope this semi-pro info at least gives you a start.

[Nick Griffin]

Wearing PINK??? Where did you get those photos?? It’s all Photoshop, I swear to God.

Seriously, welcome David to the AARP forum where most of us have grey hair and the majority of the discussion this week seems to be on ageism. Your wisdom and eloquence are a fine addition to our humble pasture.

-Nick Griffin

[Nick Griffin]

The key is to BUDGET! HUH???

Sounds like a strategy for Las Vegas or maybe playing the lottery. Sure the odds are against you, but WTF, you might get lucky and win one. It happens. Sometimes. Just be sure to set your limit up front so that when the money is gone you know not to put any more in.

So that’s the part of the “coach’s” post with which I strongly disagree. There are two other areas which make some sense to me. IF you are selling a service that the general public might use, like wedding videos, casting a wide net (ie.- TV advertising) can work. But not just any TV buy.

If you’re working with your local cable company don’t buy the ROS (run of station is what this used to stand for) rotation for $5 a spot. That means your spots land all over the place – typically the places no one else has already paid a higher price to be.

While the third re-broadcast of Larry King at 4am MIGHT be seen by some prospective brides and their mothers it’s nowhere near as effective as paying a higher price for spots to be placed only on the Lifetime and “O” channels. Narrow that to spots between noon to midnight and the degree to which you are targeting your audience increases again. Now buy your spots in “flights” so you can go after the times of the year when weddings are being planned. January and February are prime because so many proposals take place during the December holidays and so many people want June weddings. Hmm. Starting to sound a little less like roulette?

Where coach was right on the money is offering a “report” or other response reward. While it’s value as a tracking tool is a bonus, that’s not its primary function. What makes this effective is quite simply the fact that you’re giving the prospect something of VALUE to her — a tool for helping to make the decision.

Now take this logic back to OTHER types of prospects. For example the business owner / TV advertiser discussed in my earlier post. He’s looking for what appeals to his or her self interest, too. “Ten ways make your TV advertising more effective.” speaks directly to self interest. You just have to use the most appropriate vehicle for getting in front of him or her. And that my friend, is NOT general market TV. Even business-oriented TV is overly broad because what portion of business people are the actual DECISION MAKERS about advertising on TV or contracting for corporate video? It’s likely a very small number. For the sake of this argument let’s say it may be one or two in a hundred.

Now approach this from another direction. Develop a list of prospects, research them, determine the names of the decision makers and contact them directly with a mailer and/or DVD with message that appeals to their self interest. You’ve just gone from reaching one or two in a hundred to possibly one hundred in a hundred. You’ve also gone from something very passive — a fleeting TV spot — to a more active form of contact, preferably something your prospect will be able to hold onto.

Being in business is enough of a gamble. The way you market yourself doesn’t have to be.

[Nick Griffin]

I power up just to keep the drives semi-active. But this is NOT based on any science or actual functional knowledge whatsoever. Love to hear from someone who knows facts on this. Maybe the drives should be spun once a month or once a year.

Your second question is far easier. Moving the data around means that it’s re-written and therefore would be made up of stronger magnetic fields. I believe that hard drives utilize some degree of redundancy to overcome small faults in the data. Re-writing the data every few months/years/whatever would therefore make the data more reliable. I also have to assume that this would ideally mean writing to a new (or newly formatted) drive.

But, as stated above I’m no drive science expert. I know more about how drives are marketed than how they work inside.

[Nick Griffin]

Viola! I knew there was a reason in the early days that I wrote posts offline and saved them. Here’s a post I wrote on this subject in April of 2001.

Let me be blunt. The biggest problem with broadcast advertising is that it is just that: broad. While virtually everyone watches TV, only a very, very, very small number of people watching TV buy TV advertising and TV production. Therein lies what I see as a problem. Advertising TV production on TV is an overly expensive and inefficient way to reach your target market. That said, may I offer an alternative?
Make VHS dubs (err… today let’s make that DVDs) of your self promotion spot and select portions of your reel and direct mail it to a list of hand-selected advertisers in your market. Use some form of provocative teaser message on the box or tape label to improve the odds that your prospects will take the time to pop in the tape. Messages like:

What’s the least expensive way to DOUBLE
the response you get from TV advertising?
– – –
Why are your TV spots not generating more sales?
– – –
Ten ways make your TV advertising more effective.

You get the idea. Tease them with something that both directly appeals to their self interest and arouses their curiosity. I prefer pre-printed box mailers for this sort of thing, but to save money and time you could get away with just the label.

Yes, this will take a lot more work than airing a spot, but it is, IMHO, much more likely to get results.

So there you go. As true 6+ years later as it was then. Just remember to make your pitch RELEVANT to the recipient.

[Nick Griffin]

I’ve been doing this for a couple of years now using very low cost “bare” drives moved in and out of a cheap external drive housing. Mind you we don’t do this with every job, just the ones which as Kieran describes get tweeked now and then. As for safety, the most critical jobs live on two separate drives. That, and powering up the drives once every 6 months, is probably a fairly safe strategy.

Oh, and Michael – I don’t believe that LaCie makes drives. I believe that they simply package drives in their own housings. Personally I have no idea which drives are more or less reliable, but I feel reasonably safe using Seagate Baracudas.

[Nick Griffin]

Several good suggestions here already. So, hopefully, here’s one more:

IF you have sufficient creative control and the ears of the powers that be, propose using :10’s instead of :30’s. :10’s typically cost 50% of a :30 which, while seemingly unfair to those who count beans, means that you can right away DOUBLE the frequency with which you run the spot.

Of course the other big advantage is that you can come up with a single short and sweet message and not have to artifcially fill :30 seconds. Promoting one media in an entirely different media is tough. Make it easy on yourself any way you can.

[Nick Griffin]

Tim wrote: “Use your knowledge of the different media available to you…”

Perhaps some of the best advice I can offer Frank and anyone else in a similar position is to, as much as you can, diversify what you offer. The negative side of this is something along the lines of “…if all you have is a hammer, every problem starts looking like a nail.” Broaden your skill set (and toolbox) and you can get more work from the same people.

My business started out (a hundred years ago) as production and ad placement service for a few local radio advertisers. Had a very nice audio studio and knew (what I thought at the time was) a lot about radio and audio production techniques. Growth eventually came from clients starting to ask for more than radio. A lot more.

This was the start of my realizing that I was in the CLIENT business, not the radio business, not the TV production business, nor the training video business or even advertising business. Rather than hanging out a shingle as a specialist we spent a lot of time learning how to take the needs of our clients and translate that into a variety of delivery vehicles. It required broadening my skill set in addition to bringing in people who knew things I didn’t. Oh… and a fair amount of investing in various types of gear.

In the past 15 years this has matured into our company being a specialist in, and having most of our clients within, a couple of narrow technical / industrial industries. We get much of our work because we bring a lot of knowledge to the party — we don’t need to start at the beginning on projects because we already know the clients’ technologies, their histories, their competitors and most importantly THEIR customers. Now instead of a few local radio advertisers we work for several global clients with a broad spectrum of communication needs.

Being the absolute best in a narrow specialty is admirable, and certainly an attribute shared by many of the COW’s forum leaders. But it’s not me. I’m a “jack of many trades, master of some.” It’s served me well and been good insulation from the ups and downs of any one type of business.