[Matt Kulp]

I have been approached by a construction company that we work for about purchasing a commercial spot in his new television marketing campaign. He will be airing a 30 minute "builders showcase" for his company every week for a year. He has brought in a professional company to film his commercial and has opened it up to a select amount of subs. I have the opportunity to purchase 15, 30, or 60 second spread for each week. Included in the price is the filming and production work, the commercial itself, and then a copy of the commercial for our personal use. This half hour show will be on Saturday mornings and has a 40 mile target market from our area.

Has anyone done anything like this before and if so, what was the result?

I am leaning toward a 30 second clip, just for our design/build and leave maintenance completely out of it. This is not a small chunk of money, so I want to get some opinions.

Thanks

[site]

I am very cautious about any advertising that casts a wide net- TV, Yellow pages, radio, etc. The wide net catches a whole bunch of dead end leads. You can prequalify your customers on the phone and try to avoid racing around to those dead end bids that have you cursing under your breath from the minute you turn into the driveway. Why spend all that money and time? The same effort and money spent in a more focused way would get you much better results.

[Matt Kulp]

Originally posted by site
I am very cautious about any advertising that casts a wide net- TV, Yellow pages, radio, etc. The wide net catches a whole bunch of dead end leads. You can prequalify your customers on the phone and try to avoid racing around to those dead end bids that have you cursing under your breath from the minute you turn into the driveway. Why spend all that money and time? The same effort and money spent in a more focused way would get you much better results.

Site, thanks for the post, but I am going for as wide of a net as possible to see our logo and see the type of work we do! This is a high end construction company, and our company fits right in with his target market.

I understand the pre qualifying, however what could be better then the visual impact that I will get from thousands of homes? Direct mail can't give it to you, what other type of median would offer the impact this will for the money, as well as generate traffic to our web site?

I was not going to disclose cost, but I think it will have an impact on the discussion.

15 second- $3,000
30 second- $5,000
60 second- $7,000

Ok, here is what I get for the $:
-Production of commercial with copyrighted version on disc for our marketing use in the future
-52 commercials, 1 commercial a week for a full year
-The construction company is going to have a massive amount of signage around the area promoting the show
-The construction company is going to have full page color ads in major local papers promoting the show weekly
-The construction company is going to do 5 second blurbs on major networks in the local area to promote the show, including HGTV and DIY networks.

There are about 8 other companies purchasing time, and the only other company remotely tied to the industry will be an Arborist which is not a problem since I am not involved in tree work. All the marketing material promoting the show will have our name included.

[site]

Sounds like you are going to go for it. I would come up with a good list of prequalifying questions to minimize dead end leads.

[Lanelle]

Does this mean that they will produce one commercial which will then be placed 52 times? I'm wondering if you would get better response if you had seasonal ads that changed every three or four months? If this continues into a second year, you could have enough ads to keep the campaign fresh and interesting.
If that is the price for the entire year, it seems very reasonable to me. That is less than $100 per week. It might make sense to place a small ad in the same papers that the show is being advertised in.
As a side note, will you ever be invited to be a guest expert on the show? That could be worth more than the cost of the commercials.

[Matt Kulp]

Lanelle,
It is one commercial placed 52 times. I agree it would be nice to have the option to change, but that is why the $ is reasonable. As far as the guest expert, this will not be available. They are sticking with commentary about the new homes and the mission of the company.

That is a good idea about the advertising in the same papers though!

Thanks for the input.