A few years back a client of mine was delighted to receive a phone call from a television producer offering exposure for his business on a national TV program.
The offer was Jeff, who is a builder, would donate his company’s work to a television home improvement show and in return Jeff’s business would get a mention in the credits as well as some coverage in the program.
Jeff agreed, had new t-shirts for his labourers printed and they did three days work helping celebrity gardeners refurbish a backyard.
The guys had a ball, the labourers chatted up the presenter and the pretty production assistants and for a day or so Jeff felt like he was in Hollywood.
A few weeks later the show went to air – there were a couple of glimpses of Jeff’s guys doing stuff and if you were quick with the freeze button you could pick out part of Jeff’s business name and phone number.
When the show finished, Jeff’s business appeared for a split second which was difficult to read if you were lightning fast with the remote control. Not a great return for several thousand dollars of labour and materials.
That was an expensive lesson for Jeff.
Recently I heard of a business that was asked to contribute some of products to a newspaper – they wanted an ongoing commitment that would cost the business quite a bit of money.
For the newspaper this is a great deal – they tie in a promotion for their readers that costs them nothing. The business is left out of pocket with little upside except for some “exposure” of dubious value.
We see this repeated every day by dozens of businesses being seduced into offering fat discounts for group buying sites. The salesman’s spiel is that a prominent offer will get exposure on their email that goes out to thousands of people.
Most of these promises are nonsense; giving away your time or work for free is the most expensive thing a business can do and if it’s going to work it has to be part of a strategic plan.
It’s been said all publicity is good publicity, but that’s not really true if there’s no return on a substantial effort.
Blindly giving things away in the hope of getting some free publicity isn’t a good business practice and those who urge you to do so aren’t acting your best interests as Jeff learned.
