Using Spec Spots To Cold Call

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• CryingPrunes April 26, 2009, 4:31 pm

  Spec Spots: The ongoing battle rages on.

  In our cluster it can often become a ploy for when the sales figures get low. “Oh, we’ll just do a bunch of specs.” And it’s always for existing, long-standing clients.

  I remember being especially frustrated in my TV days. At the very least, I felt that a spec spot should showcase our capabilities. But when it came “time to make the spec ads,” (insert Dunkin’ Donuts guy here), often the sales rep would immediate call the client to find out what kind of spot they wanted. And almost always, they would show up with a client-written script.

  And because TV production comes with a bill that we charge to the client, “Spec Commercial” quickly came to mean, “Free Commercial”. In the hopes that they’d buy airtime.

  So many wasted hours.

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• Jonathan April 28, 2009, 6:57 am

  It’s funny. My production guy and I were talking about this very thing last week. And we were questioning the “conversion” of spec spots (or as we call them “demo’s”) into a sale.
  Usually our Sales people use them to pitch a big promotion to a client to let them hear how it would sound. But we went through a list of 10 really big demo’s that were put together for multi national companies. Demo’s that took hours to write and produce. And out of the 10 varying demo’s for various promotions….One sale.
  That’s not very convincing. My problem with the whole spec spot debate is the amount of work that we put into them (and it’s a lot – generally they sound better than the normal product) . We are a small team and we are under pressure on a continuous basis to produce adverts for current paying clients, and yet that falls by the way-side in the hope that the “big fish” will be netted.
  So, we’re asked at least once a week… “can you quickly produce a demo for XYZ”…”just so they can hear what it sounds like?”

  Some sales agents can’t even see a client without a demo loaded on a disc or a laptop so they can whip out and play at the meeting. Often they have no idea what the client needs to promote or sell, but we’re asked “just put a demo together so we can play him an advert”
  …Why? Everyone knows what a Radio advert sounds like, and if can’t …do we really want them as clients?
  I jest. But a perfect example happened today. A retirement home marketed at active retirees has opened so I was asked to put together a “demo” to play at a presentation. As we did one for a similar retirement village 2 years ago, we re-used the beginning of the advert and changed the main announcer (yes Dan I know I know – cookie cutter copy – but it was the same thing) Only to get an e-mail this afternoon to say “I (me) had missed the point and the client wants to promote the frail care section”.
  Oh it’s my fault. sorry. I thought it was a spec spot, not the actual spot.
  I could go on and on about this, but I have another demo to sort out… I agree with Cryingprunes, often, just a waste of time.

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• Mike Broesky April 28, 2009, 10:11 am

  Dan — r.e. cold call spec ads: A few thoughts based on my experiences.

  It's like a waiter bringing the meal to the table before you order.

  Cold call spec ad requests are a sign of a sales rep with a weak presentation. Maybe they're new & don't know better, maybe they're old & DO know better but don't care — either way, it's a unique opportunity for Writers and Producers to teach.

  A better use of the client's time (and that of the writer/producer) would be to sit down with the client and a member of the Creative team, go over a needs-analysis (I recall seeing a "Dan O'Day" version of this somewhere) and get a clear idea of what the client NEEDS to accomplish with their advertising.

  THEN go back to the studio and put spec ads together based on these specific marketing objectives. This creates an opportunity for a valid & important meeting with the client that absolutely progresses their marketing plan in the right direction.

  Including a Writer or Producer in the meeting has 2 benefits — it provides the Creative team the opportunity to get a 'feel' for the client & the business (most sales reps will not fully understand this, but good reps will see the benefit), and it provides a positive step toward showing the client you are serious about growing their business, by bringing in other members of your team.

  *Note — I refer to a 'spec' ad as being an unsold piece of creative/production. Until it's sold, it is speculative. But with the right ground work, a spec ad is likely to sell.

  Ultimately, the benefits of radio are powerful enough to 'sell' a client, without the need of spec ads. Resorting to spec ads should only be an option when all other avenues are exhausted, but you're determined to get radio working for your client, and you just need to push them over the edge. Properly prepared spec ads will increase your closing ratio, but be warned, they take a significant investment of time & resources to do so.

  That's maybe about 3-cents worth.

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