Expert: Peter Gabany - 4/29/2004

Question
Dear Peter

I enjoy reading your column and find your advices valuable. Recently we had a very good deal in advertising. We can use the sides of a double decker bus that transports the tourists around the central business district area of the city. This is a very popular area as well, as there is lots of business people, and lots of pedestrian traffic around the area .We are a consulting company our main divisions are Recruitment, Business Solutions and IT.We would like to represent these divisions on the bus.We are a growing business, couple of years old, not much brand recognition.
What is the best strategy to maximise this advertising space on the bus?
We are based in Sydney/Australia and our target group is Small to medium sized businesses

thanks a lot for your feedback  

Answer
Cenk,

Well if we became your agency you would be our 2nd Australian based client – only a suggestion. We work for a company that manufactures and markets herbal treaments.

Transit has always been a favourite with us as it is inexpensive, reaches a lot of people and if the creative can tell a story of the services you provide it can drive business to your door.

From a strategic point of view (POV) you need first to develop a features, benefits and values list. From this it is much easier to determine the strategy. Let me explain.

Car manufacturers used to sell vehivle based on the fact that they had seats, wheels, brakes, an engine etc. This is oversimplified but it is just an analogy. Later we see them moving to selling via benefits. Take brakes for example. Feature now has moved to ABS brakes and the benefit is that the car stops on a dime even in slippery conditions, but where the real difference comes is in the value that the consumer can take away from this.

The car comes with ABS brakes. So it stops on a dime. I (the customer) would feel safest driving this vehicle because of ABS brakes. Obviously now everyone has ABS brakes so new features, benefits and values must be explored in order to position the sale of the vehicle.

By recruitment I take this to mean that you run a head hunter business. If so the feature that you might have is that you have over 1,000 people on file. The benefit is that you have already screened and ranked these people. The market reality is that hiring new people can be costly if you pay to train these people and learn that they are untrainable. The value statement is; I (the costumer) can feel assured that the people referred to us by Cenk are the people that fit our business needs and will represent a solid return on our investment.

The difficult part of this is now translating this list of values into creative that motivates people to select your company/service.

Remember, there has got to be an objective for your advertising. Some people will try and sell you an awareness campaign. Develop the brand (buzzword). We contest, if you are spending dollars and cents, you better be getting a return on that investment. Building awareness for your logo or company name on a bus will happen as a matter of advertising, but to create understanding for what it is that you do and how you differ from other companies offering similar services is an objective that if reached WILL generate a return on investment.

So to answer your question. What is the strategy we would recommend. Spend some quality time with you people and develop a features, benefit and value list for each of your divisions. It doesn't matter what size they are, they all have a service portfolio and we can develop a true positioning for each division by first understanding the values that each service offers.

If a bank for example offers savings and loans, what is their point of difference. Another way to look at this is to look at the barriers people would have in switching banks? I'm comfortable where I am, I'm uncertain what I might get somewhere else, aren't all banks the same?

In your business it might be – well those people are just IT people and we have an IT person so why do I need them? Well the IT person that they have may be a network administrator for 6 computers and an inhouese server, where you people could work with their in-house IT to develop internet and intranet capabilities etc.

So now we have a featres, benefit, value structure as well a list of barriers that might prevent people to use your service. One last thing. why the heck are you special. What is your brand personality. Do you understand my problem? How quickly can you get to a solution? Will I enjoy working with you? Why?

If you go through this exercise, chances are you will have an idea of what you can communicate on your transit adverting to meet the objectives you lay out for yourselves.

Please consider the use of publicity and brochures and possibly business radio. We would love to help you, given the chance, if othing else but to review the lists that you will create to devise positioning for your company.

Please write again and feel free to email me direct
<promote@limelight.org>

Pete