Mr. Glasow was a businessman and publisher of a humor magazine that he marketed to other businesses who used it as their ‘house organ’. He ran this business for 60 years and that resulted in hundreds of quotes. The one above however could be a definition of promotional advertising marketing.
Our promotional industry is about message delivery. If the message informs, it is advertising. If it motivates we call it marketing. We also know that all message delivery relies on repetition of the message to increase its effect. The repetition is measured by Cost Per Thousand Impressions (CPM). A $100 ad in a newspaper that is seen by 10,000 people has a CPM of $10. Once an ad runs, the influence from that ad is gone. Same for broadcast. Virtually all media except for promotional has to be paid for again to make another impression. We can easily see that promotional qualifies as the right way.
What the right way is depends on the intended target of the message and the CPM. A higher cost to a more select group might be what is right. Promotional advertising gives us a lot of latitude; it can be divided into three distinct types - billboard, lifestyle, and utility. Billboard is any promotional advertising that is displayed to others when the promotional media is in use. Most logoed or imprinted apparel, calendars, displays, and signage come under the billboard column. Lifestyle can include everything from an ice cream scoop to a bag for your golf shoes. Utility covers most desktop items, drinkware, ice scrapers, and a lot more. There are also lots of hybrids that may touch on two of these categories at the same time.
The highest number of impressions resulting in the lowest CPM are attained in the billboard area. Utility is in the middle and lifestyle generally returns the lowest impression count. To give examples, a calendar (billboard) is seen every day by many people many times. A mouse pad (utility) is seen very often but not generally by other people. A pizza cutter (lifestyle) is seen maybe once a week and usually just to the person using it.
This is where the “...what is right / ...right time” come together. In broadcast advertising and marketing CPM is king and placement is queen! Placement is based upon content; beer commercials during a football game vs. afternoon soaps. You still have a good chance that some of your impressions will be on people that will never respond (they don’t drink beer or beer is not appealing at the time they saw the ad). Broadcast gives huge numbers of impressions which equals a low CPM, but actual impact may be very low. Would an advertiser prefer a few customers who buy or thousands that don’t?
This is where you come in. By “narrowcasting”, or designing a message delivery to a very specific consumer, you're tailoring the impressions by putting that message on the right promotional media and delivering it to exactly the best prospect you can. This all but absolutely guarantees great results for your customer. While your client may have a desire to have results now, and they very well may, the real power is that their message will continue to influence over time. The message has the potential of influencing others and there is no additional cost for those impressions. And every time another impression is made the CPM is less!
If all you do is sell ‘promotional products’ and you spend your time trying to find the lowest cost for a green coffee mug - none of this will matter to you. But for those that want to demonstrate higher value to their clients, those that want to differentiate between the work they do and the online price race, this is critical. Knowing what is briefly explained here will allow you to have valuable discussions with marketers at your client’s business instead of their purchasing agent.
If you do find that you are not being given the opportunity to work with the marketing decision makers but must “quote” to the purchasing agent, try this: offer to do something special for them. Ask the purchasing agent to “call you last” so you can either confirm that they already have the best price or you will save them some money. If they accept your offer you will be avoiding the trap of blind quoting. Knowing the best price they have gives you the chance to either meet, beat, or pass on the business. You won’t get everyone to accept your offer but those that do can be well worth trying.
Gregg Emmer is chief marketing officer and vice president at Kaeser & Blair, Inc. He has more than 40 years experience in marketing and the promotional products industry. His outside consultancy provides marketing, public relations and business planning consulting to a wide range of other businesses and has been a useful knowledge base for K&B Dealers. Contact Gregg at gemmer@kaeser-blair.com.