The Benefit of Engaging Commercial Advertising
In 2012, I had the opportunity to create commercial advertising for a defense lawyer in Greenville, SC. His overall marketing and branding campaign was absolutely amazing. He called himself the "420 Attorney" and his tagline was "When a Good Time Goes Bad". The branding of his company alone is worth millions. To bad he's not living in Colorado or Los Angeles. His name is Rob Ianuario and I was privileged to have worked with him for three and a half year's on his radio commercial advertising.
When we first started working together I didn't really pay to much attention to his stuff. I probably shouldn't admit that, but I did! I had another guy creating his commercials because I was new to the market and company. I was tied up doing a lot management related stuff. Our department was an absolute mess and our systems were not being followed. The other reason was Rob liked to write and voice his own commercials. For most clients who do this I have found it is best to keep your yapper shut so they feels warm and cozy inside. Making suggestions or giving advice on how they should change their advertising approach can be dangerous. One of the reasons is because traditional adverting has taken such a hit from social media advertising. Clients are spending way more money on a radio ads than boosting a post on Facebook.
After about four months of working together I heard one of Rob's commercials on the radio while sitting in traffic. I heard the potential his ad's had. I felt with a small change his message would be more engaging. Rob does a fantastic job telling/writing a :60 story as to why you need his service. He also does a great job voicing his story as the narrator. He has a slightly serious deadpan voice but it is filled with large amounts of sarcasm.
I approached Rob on my idea and he trusted me enough to do it on his next commercial campaign. I asked him to cut back his copy by :07-:10 seconds so it would give me some time to drop in characters experiencing exactly what he was narrating. By adding these characters it help engage his commercials so they would stick out more in the clutter of messages we are hit with everyday. Most commercials today, even national commercial advertising only has one voice and can be very boring. What I loved about working with Rob was he was willing to take a risk. A risk that would pay off greatly on his R.O.I. (Return on Investment).
After 3 months of advertising in the 3rd quarter of 2012 with this new engaging approach, Rob saw a 40% increase in revenue. From that day forward we stayed the coarse on this new design. It helped his branding, it helped his reach, it helped his revenue because more clients were connecting to what they were hearing. We even won some awards! Radio advertising still works! It just needs some love and attention. It also needs clients who are willing to take a risk every once in awhile.