Category: Marketing

For Portland/Vancouver Home Improvement Companies Only

This is a confidential message intended for Portland-area companies home remodeling or home improvement businesses. If you are not interested in talking to local homeowners in Northwest Oregon or Southwest Washington, you are forbidden to read this post. Please log off immediately.

Are they gone? Good. Now that it’s just us, I wanted to tell you about a lead-generation program that my company will be doing in September.

Can you help Portland-area homeowners save energy and reduce their impact on the environment? Then they want to talk to you. Clear Channel’s Green Home contest can put you in touch.  

Beginning in September, we’ll be promoting the Green Home Contest on all five of our radio stations and web sites. Listeners will log on and enter to win prizes that help them live greener lives. They’ll be interested in:

  • Insulation
  • Green Kitchen Materials
  • Environmentally Friendly Lighting
  • Energy-Saving Heating and Air Conditioning
  • “Green” Furniture
  • Sustainable Flooring 
  • … and much more.

Once they enter the contest, we’ll have their opt-in contact information — thousands of names, addresses, email addresses and phone numbers of people who have told us they’re interested in what you’re selling. And if you’re a category-exclusive sponsor of the Green Home contest, we’ll give that information to you.

Interested in these leads? Email me here to find out more, or call me at 503-323-6553.

Even More Airline Advertising

A quick follow-up to Wednesday’s post on airline ads. What the heck, why not just paint the whole airplane?

On Ideoblog, Larry Ribstein’s posted a picture of a plane he rode, emblazoned with the Highland Park distillery logo. Apparently, if you ask they’ll give you a small bottle of whiskey.Here’s hoping the pilot wasn’t partaking…

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

Fly the Cluttered Skies

If you’ve been thinking that there are just too many messages coming at you from every direction… and you should just jump on a plane to get away from it all… think again.

  Assuming that your airline hasn’t just laid off the flight crew, here are a few things you can expect:

  According to the Wall Street Journal, five different airlines will be selling advertising on your boarding pass, courtesy of a marketing company called Sojern, Inc. “Sojern says the online check-in process will remain essentially the same until the boarding pass appears on a computer screen. Then the traveler will be able to click on the various ads and suggestions. When travelers print their boarding passes, the ads will automatically be printed, too. Fliers can, however, click a box to prevent the ads from being printed.”

  The New York Times tells us that US Airways “offers advertisers spots on ticket jackets, cocktail napkins and even air-sickness bags, [and] has, until recently, been one of the few airlines running tray-table ads.” More airlines are considering the tray-table ad idea. Meanwhile, the Times reports, JetBlue is selling advertising on the screens of their seat-back TV’s. (Thank you to Deborah Brody for the tip).

  USA Today reports that the baggage carousels at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport will have advertising on the conveyor belts. According to the article, “the baggage carousel provides advertisers a captive audience of travelers who ‘wait 15-plus minutes for their luggage to arrive,’ says Tracy Zwahlen of DoubleTake Marketing, which is selling and producing the ads.”

 Enjoy your trip.

 

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

What’s Wrong With This Promotion?

Driving to the office today, I heard a radio ad for a local X-Rated merchandise establishment — Fantasy for Adults Only. They are having a Tent Sale. And like every good tent sale, free hot dogs will be served.

Would you eat a hot dog at an adult shop?

 

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.

“We Had A Really Nice Ad”

I subscribe to Roy Williams‘ view that campaigns rarely fail because they use the wrong medium; they fail because they deliver the wrong message. But it’s an uphill battle — one of the most common objections an advertising salesperson hears is “We tried [name of medium here] and it didn’t work.”

The other day a jewelry store owner told me he wasn’t interested in meeting with me because “we tried radio once and it didn’t work. We had a really nice ad, and it didn’t bring us any business.”

If it didn’t bring you any business, I asked, what made it a really nice ad?

“Several people called us,” he replied, “and asked where they could buy the music.”

The most depressing part of the conversation is that he delivered the line completely without irony. Someone in my profession convinced him to spend good money on a campaign whose most memorable feature was the music.

Years later, this business owner still believes that this ineffective commercial is how a jewelry store radio ad is supposed to sound. And that — Tom Shane and Woody Justice notwithstanding — radio won’t work for his store.

If he’d been willing to meet with me, I might have showed him what a really, really nice ad sounded like. An ad that sells jewelry, not music.

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Click this link to subscribe to Portland’s Finest Advertising Blog.

Request your free copy of my white paper, The Seven Deadly Advertising Mistakes and How to Fix Them here.

Got a question? Call me at 503-323-6553.