TV's 30-second challenge: how to create inexpensive cable television advertising that works: a practical guide for those new to the medium.

AuthorAlbro, Walt
PositionAdvertising

Picture lifts TV commercial: The location is the interior of a fortune cookie factory. Two Oriental men are lamenting the fact that business has been bad.

"No one is worried about the future," complains one.

"Darn that Peoples Bank & Trust!" exclaims the other.

One of them has an idea. He grabs fortune cookies and rashes off to the bank. He sneaks around and removes bowls of candy from each teller station and substitutes bowls of cookies.

A close-up shows the "fortune" from inside a cookie. The fortune is the bank's tagline: "The Future Looks Great from Here."

This 30-second spot ks slick and memorable. It looks like it was produced by a large national bank.

But it wasn't.

It was created by a community bank in Selma, Ala., The Peoples Bank & Trust Co., with assets under $1 billion. In the past, smaller institutions like this almost never appeared on the small screen because the only option was broadcast TV--which was expensive and blanketed more markets than needed.

But within the last few years, community banks have discovered cable TV, which is both affordable and capable of viewer targeting.

The Peoples Bank & Trust, for one, was pleased with the results of this spot, which aired on cable earlier this year. "It gave us the impact we were looking for," acknowledges Roberta Leach, marketing director.

But, not all banks are creating cable ads as good as this one. Marketers at small financial institutions often are new to the medium, and some are generating mediocre or ineffectual spots.

ABA Bank Marketing magazine researched some "best practices" for banks that are inexperienced with TV. We asked advice from marketers who have been using the medium. We also talked with an independent producer of bank commercials.

Their recommendations on how to achieve more effective ads are summarized in the following seven tips.

  1. Make sure you have a valid marketing reason for using cable.

    Banks sometimes feel pressured to "go cable" because competitors are doing it. "People are entranced by the medium," concedes Rick Rickards, vice president of electronic media for PSB Media Productions, Lake Forest, Calif. "It's exciting." He notes that banks are sometimes lured into cable without an adequate marketing plan and "before they know what to say."

    Roberta Leach cautions that not all campaigns work as well on television as they do in print. In the case of The Peoples Bank & Trust, cable made sense because the bank was rebranding itself. Branding is a category that works well on television. "Make sure you know what you want to do," she advises. Document the case for cable. "Don't jump into it just to do TV," she adds.

  2. Decide how much you can afford to spend.

    After determining what your bank is selling and who the audience is for that product or service, you need to ascertain how much money is available, says Darry Bledsoe of Union Bank, N.A., Oklahoma City, Okla., (assets: $325 million). The challenge: "Spending enough money to produce quality spot that will give you a long shelf life," says Bledsoe, who is vice president of marketing/public relations.

    Cable cost is a paradox. On one hand, cable can be produced inexpensively. On the other, the...

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