Radio Days

Here are some radio scripts I wrote for Sibley's department store. The first set is for our intimate apparel department named Amanda's Closet, started to compete with the then-new Victoria's Secret. The thrust of these ads was to be a little naughty, in keeping with the theme and design of the department. Alas, they were deemed a little too sexy for our image.

And, of course for the holiday season, we had the "Dear Santa" versions.

The second set is a series of light-hearted scripts for the young men's department. There was an adventure writer at that time named Tim Cahill, who took amazing adventures and wrote about them for magazines such as Outdoors. A collection of his articles had been published in book form, called "Jaguars Ripped My Flesh." These ads followed in that adventurous spirit, and the emphasis was on the imagination, and painting pictures in your mind.

The Young Men's department did a lot of radio advertising, for the most part generic price advertising that ran on WCMF-FM since they owned the men's demo in Rochester. I came up with quite a few different ways of advertising the Young Men's department, highlighting ADG's house brand, "Rugged Elements."

We also had the opportunity to run radio for Jockey underwear, an opportunity to use the Theatre of the Mind to get customers to visualize The Man in the Jockey Underwear.

2010 Golf Tournament for Vendors & Contractors

Every year, we put on a golf tournament to bring together our vendors with our best contractor customers, for an afternoon of golf, a little business, dinner, and a lot of camaraderie.
Our slogan is "Shop Where the Builders Shop." For our tournament, I modified that in a playful, tongue-in-cheek way on our sponsor signs:  "Golf Where the Builders Golf."

To add an element of fun and competition to the afternoon, I designed a series of T-shirts that would be passed out to the golfers at the end of the competition. I selected vendor names that could be paired with appropriate colloquial verbs indicating victory.

As the event approached, however, the decision was made, while the shirts were funny and would be well-received at the dinner after the day of golf, the money would not be spent for further "giveaway" prizes.

Invoice Messaging

With the advent of eMails and electronic invoicing, a great portion of our invoices and monthly statements are now sent electronically. Unlike traditional printed "statement stuffers" in snail mail, tagging product messaging at the bottom of the email adds no cost, but increases the positive communication we can have with our customers.
Messages were designed for three types of communication: image building, time-sensitive events, and new product introductions, and fit at the bottom of the emailed communication.

New Product Introductions:

Banner ads could be timed for new product introductions, and can be targeted geographically if, for example, a product is rolled out a selected locations, such as North Main Lumberyards only, or due to contractual limitations, available in New York but not Pennsylvania.

Time-Sensitive Events:

Special deals can be promoted, such as a sale on smoke detectors to coincide with National Fire Prevention Month, or special events, such as our annual appearance at the Empire Farm Days.  The ads can be created ahead of time and placed into the queue. They can be turned on or off remotely, so if an event is doing better than expected, we can stop additional messages from being sent to avoid customers arriving when our stocks are depleted, or change an offer to reflect an evolving supply situation ("New Models now available.")

Image Building:

We can create messages for our vendors to send out to current and/or future customers. The message can tie-in with the vendor's existing campaign, or, more likely, we can create the message to enhance the vendor's image with our customers.

Signs, Signs, everywhere signs

A unique part of the 2010 Vendor Marketing Program were the billboards. This allowed us to present a variety of clients, and client messages, that underscored the broad range of products we offer, while presenting a Big Message in a stylish and timely manner.

This particular billboard was facing the traffic traveling towards the Big Box competitor just a few miles down the road, one that typically sells their CFLs for more than double the price at which we sell our CFLs, giving a nice double meaning.

The idea of the "twisty light bulb" was intriguing. The main thrust of the advertising was always the cost-saving and environment-saving aspects. But, they are just fun to look at, and play with visually. Here's one of the ideas that generated smiles from the client, but didn't make the final cut!

Keep On Truckin'

As part of our first-ever Vendor Marketing Program in 2010, we gave vendors the opportunity to use our trailers as a canvas on which to put their message. As we have 15 locations throughout central New York and northern Pennsylvania, our trailers travel widely along many major thoroughfares, and their message is seen by several thousands of people each week.

Several vendors opted in to the program, representing a diverse array of products. I designed a unifying look that was carried through all vehicles. It had to present the vendor's message without overpowering our own branding.

In addition to trailers, each store has a box truck that is used for local deliveries, and also available for vendor branding. As the majority of local deliveries are to contractor's job sites, the messaging on the box trucks is delivered both to prospective users of the vendor's product, as well as current users to reinforce the vendor's image.

2011 Ugly Bathroom Contest

This year we initiated the Ugly Bathroom Contest, which will run thirteen weeks, beginning on February 6.

Again, I designed a series of ads, posters and department signs and tent cards, to grab customer attention and let them know about the Ugly Bathroom Contest. The idea was to design distinctive-looking ads that playfully suggest your out-of-date bathroom would be a prime candidate for a bathroom makeover.

What's So Funny About Peace, Love & Flowered Wallpaper?

By naming decades or eras, the out-datedness was implied. The target audience (women) were more likely to want to "update" their bathroom, even though all the fixtures may still be in proper working order. 

The ads were introduced in two waves. The first wave appealed to women, usually the prime mover when deciding to update a kitchen or bathroom. The second wave, introduced five weeks into the contest, was more broadly posed at men, focusing on ugly and/or broken fixtures. To urge the customer to enter the contest, I used some not-so-subtle word balloons to illustrate that your bathroom's dilapidated condition is really a cry for help.

And, of course, you can't have humorous ads for an Ugly Bathroom Contest without indulging in a little "bathroom humor."

Again, the signs and ads were designed to mesh with a cable TV/YouTube campaign that could put a voice to the word balloons, using voices that would embellish dripping faucets, slow drains, toilet bowls, etc. Unfortunately, the decision was made against carrying the campaign across several media.

The 2010 Ugly Kitchen Contest

We introduced the Ugly Kitchen Contest in September of 2010, which ran for 12 weeks beginning on Labor Day, September 6, and running through November 28.

To enter the contest, customers were asked to submit a photo of their current kitchen. I wanted to reinforce the photograph idea in the signage, so I included a variety of "ugly kitchens" made to look like old-fashioned snapshots. And, in thinking about the contest, where we are asking customers to show us the ugliest part of their home. In a way, to be proud of something you shouldn't be proud of.  

I figured humor was the best way to approach this, in the vein of the "Your mama" jokes, or the "You know you're a Redneck" jokes.

The idea of this method was that the same theme could be applied to a series of radio ads, reiterating the message from the signs, with a Rodney Dangerfield-like voice. This would make the radio ads interesting and reinforce the visual of the signs in the store. The Ugly Kitchen Contest radio commercials were not used, but a :05 tag was added to our standard "boilerplate" advertising spots.

In our post-contest tracking, a very small percentage (less than 2%) gave radio as the medium through which they heard about The Ugly Kitchen Contest.