Career choices led to multi-faceted learning

Throughout the years, as with many marketing professionals, I have been fortunate to learn many aspects of marketing and communication through the educational system (BS in Communication Arts from Xavier University in Cincinnati), and through working in different areas of marketing and communication.

I have a background in copywriting, objective/strategy planning, printing, audio and video work, photography, advertising, sales, and general marketing. All of my work came to a nexus when I was about forty years old and went to work as an account supervisor for what was, at the time, a well- respected advertising firm in Cincinnati.

 “Many Hats” Account Supervisor

There were two aspects of the agency that were very important to me personally in my growth as a marketing professional. The first was “the many hats” experience. As an account supervisor, I was responsible for the total aspect of client contact. There was no creative director, so I had to interface with and inspire the art department to reflect what the client and I had agreed upon in regards to creative content. I was also responsible for developing marketing plans and strategies for clients, as well as guiding the media department to make the correct buys to reach the target audience with a good frequency on an agreed-upon budget. There were no copywriters, so the account supervisor was responsible for copy content also. Oh yes, there was also the fact that I was to develop some sales for the company at the same time.

The copy/contact system prevented the account supervisor from going to the client with a presentation, and the client saying “That is not what I meant at all, and it’s not what we discussed.” as happens in agencies that disburse the creative content throughout the agency.

Creative always follows objective/strategy work

The other agency principle drummed into me was that creative followed objective/strategy thinking only. To insure that creative concepts were effective, all work for a client followed an objective/strategy statement agreed upon by both the agency and the client. The president of the agency was a follower of the Proctor and Gamble three- paragraph strategy statement and had all of us that worked there learn it, and follow it. Below is the three paragraph strategy given to me by a former P&G Vice President, now deceaseed.

The Three Paragraph (NO MORE) Copy Strategy

The object of this advertisiing is to convince XXXX that XXX.

The Reason why is XXX

The Tone (or character) of the advertising will be XXX in keeping with the character of the product or service.

EXAMPLE: LAVA SOAP

THE OBJECTIVE OF LAVA SOAP ADVERTISING IS TO CONVINCE MEN THAT LAVA IS THE MOST EFFECTIVE PRODUCT THEY CAN USE TO GET HEAVY DUTY DIRT AND GREASE OFF THEIR HANDS.

THE REASON WHY IS THAT IT CONTAINS PUMICE, AN EFFECTIVE YET MILD "SANDPAPER" TYPE INGREDIENT.

THE TONE OF THE ADVERTISING WILL BE SERIOUS AND HARD WORKING, LIKE THE PRODUCT.

As you can see, it's a neat and concise way to develop marketing and advertising strategies.

My own agency

After ten years, the owner of the agency sold to another individual, who changed the way the agency did business, and it was obvious that I needed to change. So I started a one man agency which grew to a four person agency in about two years, and was successful for about six more. As a result of the copy/contact system, I had made close personal relationships with clients, and brought several of them with me, which was agreed upon when I left. The clients that came with me were in retail, BtoB manufacturing and associations.  There were projects in many areas of advertising and marketing for my clients which were fun and exciting. Unfortunately, with the passage of time, many moves, and saving the work to what is now outdated technology, I have no samples to display on this website.

But I will try to use words to recreate as much as possible the objective/strategy and the resulting creative in a few areas of communication.

RADIO

The bulk of my radio work was for a seven-store camera chain operating in the Cincinnati area. The objective for the client was to convince the target audience that the stores should be their “stores of choice” when considering any products in the photography field.

The strategy for the radio content was to present the photo chain as a professional source for all things photographic and to surround the professionalism of the owner with humorous copy. So two voices would do humorous by-play about a problem in the area of photography, then the owner’s voice would tell the listener how to solve the problem, usually with a humorous one-liner following. The commercials were successful in raising sales for the chain, and a group of these spots received a ten thousand dollar award from the Photo Marketing Association (PMA).

The distinctive style of the spots made them instantly recognizable, and customers of the chain frequently commented positively about them to store personnel.

One example: we decided to take on the big box stores' entry into the camera business by painting that as cold, impersonal and unknowledgeable, while painting the client as warm and extremely knowledgeable.

A customer in a “Mega-Mart” store was wrapped up in the chains that the store used to prevent stealing the cameras. The customer was unable to break free for three days, and no one came to help her. Then the camera chain’s owner came on and touted personal service and professional knowledge from all of his employees.

PRINT

We were approached by a marketing director from a local bank’s airplane leasing division. Their differentiation from other leasing services was their ability to put through leases faster and with no hassle. They wanted to get this message across by using print in business publications relating to airplane leasing, and in others such as Forbes.

So the objective was to convince the target audience to use their airplane leasing services. The strategy was to demonstrate their differentiation of prompt service.

I came up with the headline, “We Won’t Keep You Hanging Around the Hangar.”

Then working with our graphic artist, we shot a person in a straightjacket, tied up with a rope. We photoshopped him hanging upside down in a hangar, backed with small jets. The body copy extolled the ability of the bank to get your loan in a hurry, and get you in a plane.

The ad resulted in more leasings, and was used in a marketing text book as an example of effective advertising.

DIRECT MAIL

I learned much about direct mail from my membership in the Cincinnati Chapter of the Business Marketing Association. [President one year: obtained Certified Business Communicator Certificate {CBC).]

Here is some of what I learned about what makes direct marketing work:

1. Top priority, the quality of the list of people you want to approach. Is it accurate? Are they really the clients you want to reach?  Each piece costs money to send out. Be sure it’s going where you need it to go.
2. The quality of the mailing. Is everything about it as professional as it can be?
3. The offer. Are you offering prospective customers something that interests them? It’s not always discounts, or dollars. Sometimes it a service, sometimes it’s a promotional item. But you need to offer something.
4. Multi-level mailings, that is, sending out related pieces at different times are much more effective than one piece.

At our agency, we had a lot of fun with a direct mail campaign we used to promote ourselves. We developed a concentrated list of clients we thought we might like to do work with, about fifty companies.

We bought some Mr. Potato Head figures that had removable eyes, ears, nose, mouth, glasses etc. The body of the Mr. Potato Head was hollow, so it could be stuffed with something, in our case candy.  Four different direct mailings were sent to the list, one with eyes, one with ears, etc. Each item had a rhyme that went with it, relating to how our agency could help them.  The payoff of the mailings was going to see the prospective client with the body of the Mr. Potato Head and talk about our advertising services.

The result was a few long term clients that more that paid for the mailings.

VIDEO

I first entered the video field about twenty-five years ago when a former colleague from the Kroger Company called and said she wanted me to spearhead a video about store manager training. I said ”Debbie, I know we did about a hundred slide-tape training programs together, but I’ve never worked in video.” She told me she valued my script-writing abilities and my stage awareness enough to want me to do the job. She hooked  me up with some experts in the technical areas, I hired some actors,  and we put together the training materials she needed.

Using that video as a self-promotion piece, I got a job with a video production house that came up with concepts, wrote scripts, and produced videos, but sub-contracted the actual shooting and editing of the videos. I did some work for Kroger, GE, Dayco, and other firms.  This work was just prior to working with the agency mentioned earlier.

I quickly found that my expertise in script writing, and my attention to detail during a shoot paid dividends for clients in many ways.