advice

Q: I am the marketing director for a new company that is looking to establish itself as a competitor in our field. What medium – TV, print ads, billboards, or radio – would bring us the best results?
Signed, A Marketing Director

A. Imagine you are driving down the interstate, and you see a billboard for McDonald’s. Only moments before, you told your family, “I’m hungry,” and all of a sudden you began to scan the skies in search of some satisfaction for your hunger. The McDonald’s billboard points you toward an exit, and you take it. You and your family eat at McDonald’s – two “Happy Meals” and two Big Mac’s. Failure for your low carb diet. Success for McDonald’s advertising.

Looking for results like that? You can find them, but not just with billboards. At Semaphore we know that every medium – when well-executed – can get results. To determine which medium suits you best, you have to examine the benefits of each one and then see if those benefits will fulfill your needs.

Seeing Your Name in Print
A new company that needs to gain not only name recognition but also to distribute information should plan carefully. Any medium works for Coca Cola, but an unknown soft drink company will need to select a medium that will give information about the company, its products and its benefits. The best medium for dissemination of information is print. Print ads allow a lot of space to provide details on the new company; they give you space to tell your story. That story must be heard before your product becomes known.

“Double Teaming”
Print ads cannot stand alone though. To truly establish your company, you will need to supplement the informational print ads with other advertising mediums. You see one of the best examples of this tactic nearly every day with the influx of prescription drug advertising. A new allergy or depression medicine needs to impact a market dominated by competitors so drug manufacturers put out three to four page spreads on their product in a magazine or newspaper. They give information about what the product does, if it will work for you, and how to get it. Then these drug companies use TV or radio ads to gain name recognition. You hear the name of the drug on the radio, you remember it, and you’re suddenly more likely to read the spread in the magazine. Or you read the spread in the magazine and are less likely to change the channel when you see the commercial touting the product’s benefits.

Double-teaming the consumer, or using mediums as supplements, keeps your product on his/her mind. Each medium can enrich the message your company is trying to send. The main benefits of a print ad are that it allows you to give detailed information and has a long shelf life instead of vanishing in 30 seconds like a TV commercial.

The “Double Whammy” of TV
Although TV commercials last only a matter of seconds, they can pack a punch with the use of both sight and sound. Showing consumers the product while telling them all the great things about it is a kind of “double whammy.” Two senses are better than one, right?

Another benefit of TV is that an advertiser can hit every demographic from those who watch wrestling to those who watch 60 Minutes. Shows are marketed to different demographics and by buying spots during particular shows, you can flavor your ad to any market. Is there a wildly popular show among the group you’re targeting? If so, TV may be an effective option, and with cable TV offering less expensive spots, TV is becoming more and more accessible.

See No Evil With Radio
Although radio spots depend on only one sense – sound – they are a successful medium in their own right. Radio listeners, unlike TV audiences are trapped in their cars; they can’t get up and walk to the fridge during commercials. Radio provides a way to speak to this captive audience.

Radio stations – like TV channels – create shows and music periods for certain listeners so that advertisers can hone in on the style of the target group. It is possible now to know the amount of time people listen to the radio and the time of day they are listening; this knowledge can help advertisers create commercials that hold the attention of consumers.

Back to Boards
We’ve already said that billboards can be a great piece of advertising; when shrewdly placed they can beckon people to any location. Remember that time you were driving along and watched your odometer hit the “10,000 miles since your last oil change” mark? Just as the anxiety hits, you see a billboard for Jiffy Lube, and they’re right up the road. Whew, you’re saved! Jiffy Lube chose to advertise using billboards rather than television commercials because no one wants to think about oil changes while watching baseball, but they’ll definitely think about them while driving. That’s what you call a smart choice of medium.

There are a couple “You Better Remember This” points to billboards, though. Putting any more than eight large words (this does not include the company name and logo) on a billboards spells “D-I-S-A-S-T-E-R.” Studies have shown that the human eye cannot read more than seven words while driving or riding in a moving vehicle. With only seven words, a well-crafted billboard can effectively supplement your print ad or radio spot.

The Final Question
In the end, determining what medium to use comes down to knowing your company. Is yours a new company that needs to tell its story via a print ad? Is yours well-known and only needs to remind consumers that you are around? What is your target market? How can you use your money to best “double team” the consumer? Where do you want your ad to take your company? Once you know the answers to these questions, picking a medium becomes easier.

Cindy Wade is Semaphore’s resident media buying guru. She has more than a dozen years of TV and radio sales experience and more than 10 years of media buying experience.