Three Television Advertising Strategies we can live without

I will probably catch quite a bit of flack and criticism for this blog entry, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. I am also not going to name any specific advertisers, as that’s not what this is about.  By profitable advertising campaign I don’t mean great or even successful advertising campaigns. Profitable to me means that you’re making more net revenues with your campaign than what it costs you to produce and run it (creative + media). For the sake of this entry, I am only looking at tactics that one can actually measure.  After having worked in both brand and Direct Response advertising for the better part of the last decade, my hope is that my perspective will be an interesting one.

Most brand campaigns are impossible to measure

With most brand advertising campaigns, figuring out the ROI is near impossible as there is no direct all to action and if there is one, it usually isn’t measurable. For example I loved the work that Hyundai did when they first announced that you can bring your car back if you lose your job. Great idea, well executed but I am not sure if their success can be led back to a television campaign or rather just having an offer that was unmatched at that time.

Now I am not saying that brand TV advertising is any more ethical than Direct Response but most of these tactics are commonly used in DR. With that being said, there are many great DR campaigns that work without these.

A $75 value now for only $20

I love cheesy DRTV campaigns.  And a blanket is a blanket, arms or not, so it’s not like they’re sending you a rug when you order a blanket. What I don’t like about these campaigns is the value that gets assigned to different products.  Most of "blanket with arm" competitors are simply not selling their for $59.95 nor is the book light worth $14.95. It’s a couple of products that cost $5 together that you’re selling for $20. Not $75 worth of products being sold for $20.  Just go to Ross in February and you can buy the magic blanket/ reading light combo for $10. While this isn’t necessarily a scam, the ridiculous values assigned to these products is just tidbit too untruthful for me. 

Free But Not Really

Free Credit Report companies are running very entertaining commercials advertising “free credit reports.” That’s great but the reports aren’t free. You’re paying a subscription charge every month which they make rather tedious to cancel. Would “$15aMonthCreditReports” get as many people to sign up? I don’t think so.

Surprise...you’re subscribed

From acne treatments to girls gone wild videos, what you thought was a one-time order turned into an automatic subscription that is rather hard to cancel.

Now, I understand that some of these tactics are simply marketing. But there’s a fine line between persuading people and misleading people. The more people that get misled, the harder it will be to get people to listen once you have a good product.