When professional associations advertise, the result usually is dreadful.
Why?
1. Usually they haven’t identified a goal for their campaign, so there’s no way to create commercials to achieve their goal.
2. Understandably, associations know nothing about effective advertising. Less understandably, they’re unwilling to admit their ignorance and put themselves in the hands of advertising professionals who know more.
3. Almost invariably a committee determines both the medium and the message. So instead of a hard-hitting sales message, they end up airing a compromise.
“It’s highly changing.”
“Yes, but it’s always local. Gotta say that.”
“Buying a home is a good investment. We should push that.”
“We want people to visit our website.”
“Well, our members are realtors. We’ve got to tell people to call a realtor.”
Voila! Money down the drain.
Here’s the commercial:
“The real estate market is ever-changing and highly localized. Interest rates are low, and buying opportunities have never been better. If you’re on the fence, the National Association of Realtors wants you to know that a home isn’t just a great place to raise a family. It’s also the key to building long-term wealth. On average, the value of a home nearly doubles every ten years. To learn more, visit Housingmarketfacts.com. Every market’s different. Call a realtor today. (DISCLAIMER)”
Got your rubber gloves on? Let’s do the autopsy….
“The real estate market is ever-changing and highly localized.”
• The opening line of a radio commercial is the commercial for the commercial. This is your one opportunity to command the attention of your target audience. Does that opening line command YOUR attention?
• Who cares?? Is the listener supposed to get excited because the real estate market is ever-changing?
• What the $%#& do they mean by “highly localized”? Are they telling us that the real estate market in Sheboygan might possibly differ from the real estate market in Manhattan? If so, do they think we don’t know that? Even more importantly, why should we care? Are they warning us not to make the mistake of retaining the services of a Manhattan realtor to help us buy a condo in Sheboygan?
“buying opportunities have never been better.”
• Not a single listener is looking for a buying opportunity. Some might want to buy a house. Some might want to stop paying rent or sharing walls with noisy neighbors. But “buying opportunity” isn’t on anyone’s wish list.
• A good radio commercial employs active language. (A passive way of saying that: “Active language should be employed.”)
“Opportunities have never been better” is passive. “If you want to buy a house in greater Sheboygan, you’ll never find a better time than right now” is active.
“If you’re on the fence”
What the $%#& are they talking about? What fence? “On the fence” means not being able to decide between two options. What options are they referring to? Whether someone wants to buy a house? Whether someone wants to buy a house now?
“The National Association of Realtors wants you to know”
Oh! This message is all about what the National Association of Realtors wants. Listeners who don’t happen to be members of the National Association of Realtors couldn’t care less what the association wants.
“…a home isn’t just a great place to raise a family. It’s also the key to building long-term wealth.”
Thanks for telling me that. Being completely ignorant, I had no idea that owning a house could serve as an investment in addition to providing a place to live.
“On average, the value of a home nearly doubles every ten years.”
Boy, is THAT a risky claim to make. What average are they referring to? In fact, I’ll go further than “risky”: That’s the kind of claim that can get an advertiser in serious trouble.
But let’s say it’s true — that over, say, the past 7 decades the value of a home has doubled every 10 years. (Again, I doubt it. But….) At a time when home prices are in a nationwide free fall, citing that statistic makes the advertiser sound foolish and in contradiction to the listener’s experience.
Successful Advertising Intersects Common Human Experience.
At the moment, the value of a home doubling in price is not the common experience of most Americans.
“To learn more, visit Housingmarketfacts.com.”
To learn more about WHAT?
HERE COMES THE CLUE TRAIN: If you want people to visit your website, you need to give them a compelling reason.
“Every market’s different.”
Oh, thanks. I thought they were all the same. Good thing your commercial set me straight.
“Call a realtor today.”
Um….Why? (See THE CLUE TRAIN, above.)
And which is the Call To Action? Do you want me to visit Housingmarketfacts.com, or do you want me to call a realtor today?
What’s The Core Message?
A radio commercial should have a single core message — the one thing you want the targeted listener to hear, to understand, and to remember.
What’s the core message of this spot? Is it….
Low interest rates?
Wealth building?
Housingmarketfacts.com?
The value of calling a realtor?
The Disclaimer
The best way to avoid the negative effect of disclaimers is not to say anything that requires a disclaimer. This commercial requires a disclaimer to weasel out of the highly suspect claim about homes nearly doubling in value every ten years.
Is It Possible This Commercial Achieved Its Goal?
Sure: If the goal was to let members of the National Association of Realtors hear the association mentioned on the radio.
Otherwise, not a chance.
Comments on this entry are closed.
These are the type of ads that cause me to scream at my radio (or tv). The sad reality is that the radio sales rep didn’t have the #$%^’s to tell the client the copy sucked and took the money and ran.
I read with interest your realtors critique, especially since “Sheboygan” (my market) was used as an example, and curiously enough, I was approached to create an ad for the Sheboygan County Board of Realtors shortly before the national campaign began. As “copy points”, I was given what was probably the national campaign content you dissected.
Being a good O’Day student, it was easy to see that the first challenge was to remove the association-centered approach the copy points took, and make it about the listener. Keeping it “local” was attempted through different language, but once the client reviewed it, the copy was returned with lots of highlights on “local”. In a perfect world, I would have the opportunity to exercise some sort of “right of refusal” over the changes, but I’ve learned when and which battles to pick, and since we were under one of thosse famous “this starts yesterday” deadlines for beginning flight, I succumbed, but kept the core goal that I’d determined to be “you should call your local realtor to buy or sell a home now”.
At the risk of another dissection, I offer the following that we agreed upon:
YOU KNOW IT…YOUR NEIGHBORS KNOW IT; SHEBOYGAN COUNTY IS A GREAT PLACE TO LIVE. AND IF YOU’VE THOUGHT OF BECOMING A HOMEOWNER, YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME! THE LOCAL REAL ESTATE MARKET IS STRONG, THANKS TO HISTORICALLY LOW INTEREST RATES, MANY HOMES AVAILABLE – AND AT STABLE PRICES. A LOCAL REALTOR WILL EVALUATE YOUR SITUATION AND FIND THE JUST THE RIGHT HOME FOR YOU. AND IF YOU’RE SELLING A HOME YOU NEED A PROFESSIONAL, LOCAL REALTOR TO MAXIMIZE THE RETURN ON YOUR INVESTMENT. MORE THAN EVER, NOW IS THE TIME TO CONTACT YOUR LOCAL REALTOR. THIS MESSAGE BROUGHT TO YOU BY THE SHEBOYGAN COUNTY BOARD OF REALTORS.
@ bb:
Ironically, this is an example of one of the rare circumstances under which I don’t accuse the radio station of complicity.
That’s because when associations and government agencies advertise, usually they have no goal they’re trying to accomplish.
If they have no goal…If they are advertising not to relieve some sort of “pain” or to motivate a specific positive action…
If their only goal is to spend their advertising budget and they have no interest in results…
I don’t get upset when the station takes the money and runs.
It’s sad, of course. But if the advertiser says, “Yeah, I don’t care of it’s gibberish. I don’t care if it doesn’t do anyone any good. Our board members wanted us to run some commercials, so all I want to do is run some commercials” — Take the money and focus your time and energy on clients who do desire an ROI on their advertising.
@ Kevin:
Good attempt to save a doomed campaign.
Unlike the original, yours has only one Call To Action.
(Why should a commercial have only one Call To Action? Why not give people a choice of responses? Because choice paralyzes response.)
It talks to the listener.
It doesn’t say anything that requires a disclaimer.
One suggestion (that perhaps you were overruled on): Replace “Local” with “Sheboygan.”
Despite Kevin’s efforts, that campaign still is worthless because it doesn’t say anything. (To be clear: That ain’t Kevin’s fault.)
Its message is, “If you want to buy or sell a home in Sheboygan County, you should call a Sheboyan realtor.”
Well, duh.
But the Sheboygan County Board of Realtors — whose members no doubt are suffering from the mortgage meltdown, economy, etc. — got what they wanted: Some commercials.
Dan,
This only highlights a gaping hole in the strategy for success formulated by most radio stations. Many managers seem to think if they just create more “platforms” for advertisers to use, and then agressively hit the streets and beat the bushes, the revenue will follow.
Did anybody stop to think that it’s not the number of platforms, or even finding the right platform for a particular advertiser, but giving the advertiser the confidence to know what he shouts to the the audience from that platform is exactly what that audience needed to hear – to solve a problem or achieve a goal that until then had been unattainable?
Honestly, if a client believes he has a product or service that will change the lives of those who hear about it – and if we as message creators can show him how to answer the listeners’ question “why this product from this client and why now” – wouldn’t he downright eager to get on one of those platforms, grab the mic, tell the world, and race them back to the store to empty his shelves?
Maybe if more businesses didn’t consider advertising a gamble, their stage fright (fear of platforms) wouldn’t have them hiding in the bushes – meaning instead of beating the bushes for clients, AEs might have to fend them off, tell them to get in line, or raise ad rates.
If stations would first commit to making their clients’ messages as effective as they could be, their clients’ success would translate into revenue success for their stations.