About Gary Davis Media -- an Austin, Texas ad
agency.
Specializing in TV advertising for
small business and professionals.
My clients sell
services people need. Quite a few of them are
attorneys -- social security disability law, personal
injury, medmal, criminal. Others include three dental
clinics, an auto insurance agency, a buyer of used gold and
jewelry, and a personal loan company. I am in Austin,
Texas, but most of my clients are in other cities.
Immediate Response TV advertising. That's
primarily what I do. By "Immediate Response", I mean
commercials that attempt to persuade prospects to take
action -- usually call my client -- now. (I use "Immediate
Response" rather than "Direct Response" because "DR" has
come to suggest the sale of products. My specialty is
selling services rather than products.)
Your offer: The most important ingredient.
I encourage and work with my clients to help them make
great offers. Their offers are what they want to trade the
prospects for the prospects' time and money. When an offer
is good, it usually doesn't take much advertising to get
results.
TV commercials need not be expensive to
make. For some Immediate Response advertisers, a
basic "graphics" commercial consisting of an announcer's
voice and music over changing words on the screen, is all
that is required. Cost to produce: $250-$450. More typical
productions, with the client or a spokesperson on camera,
can be made for around $700. Remember, it is your offer,
not how much money was spent making your commercial, that
does the most to make it work.
Commercials produced at cost. In most
cases, when I make commercials to be placed by my agency, I
make them for my actual studio cost. There is no markup to
my clients. If the commercial works, I'll do just fine from
the "agency commission" I get from the TV stations.
High-quality results from low-cost
airtime. During the 1950's, Alvin Eicoff, the
inventor of radio and TV "direct response" commercials,
discovered that expensive, heavily-watched, prime-time TV
produced inferior telephone response. Much less expensive
daytime programming produced more calls for the dollar.
Still true today.
Commercial copyrights. When an agency like
mine makes a commercial, it owns the copyright to the
commercial, unless it's signed over by contract. In most
cases, I don't charge anything for writing and producing my
clients' commercials. I only get reimbursement for my
actual expenses. So, I keep the copyrights. The commercials
must be placed through my agency. If someone wants me to
produce a commercial that will not be placed through my
agency, then I will charge for my creative services and
sign over the rights to the client.
Paying for your schedule. All of my
clients pay as they go for their TV advertising. That does
not mean that they have to pay for everything we book up
front, as soon as we book it. We may book TV time for a
couple of weeks, a month or a year (schedules cancelable
with 2-weeks notice to the stations) depending on what kind
of deals I can get -- but most clients pay by the month for
the next month's airtime, a few days before the month's
schedule begins. Read this if you wonder why I
handle all my TV business this way and why I suggest you
do too.
The financial statement. My clients
regularly receive a statement, detailing to the penny the
money they have paid to me and what I have paid out on
their behalf, backed with invoices from TV stations and
other vendors.
Yes, I'm always looking for a few more good clients! But I
only make money when my clients are successful and continue
advertising. So -- I am only looking for clients whom I am
convinced I can help. If you've looked through what I've
had to say here and you think you might like to work with
me, please send me an email.
New clients I'm
looking for now. These are people in
businesses where I have a track record, over several
years, of producing exceptional telephone response using
local TV. They must be in markets where I do not
currently have a client or prospective client in that
business. At this time, I am especially looking for
Social Security disability lawyers and denture clinics.
Want to sell a product, rather than a
service? I get a lot of email and a few calls from
people who have ideas about products they would like to
sell using direct response TV advertising. Please
understand that it's a lot harder to make money selling a
$19.95 product with a direct response TV ad than it is
selling a necessary service that can bring in thousands of
dollars from one new client.
For one thing, local "Call Now!" ads for products (as
distinct from services) usually don't work -- they require
regional or national play. Want to sell a product via
direct response TV? First, you need a great product already
in existence. You need to be able to sell it for 6X or more
what it cost you. And you need thousands of dollars you can
afford to lose to make a commercial and test it. It's a
very risky gamble.
My primary focus is on selling services,
such as legal and dental, in local markets. I'm not saying
I would never take a client who wanted to sell a product
directly with TV, but my initial mindset about it would be
very cautious.
How do we get started? First, I need to
know exactly what your offer is. Send me an email. Tell me
what you have in mind. I will probably have an opinion as
to whether I think there is a good likelihood your offer
will work on TV.
When you e-mail me with questions about
your business, please include this important
information. Please don't just send me your phone
number and ask me to call you. I probably won't, unless,
frankly, you sound as though you are exactly a type of
potential advertiser I am looking for right now. But I
will certainly respond to your e-mail and try to help
you that way.
I won't just tell you what I think you want to hear. I'll
tell you honestly what I think and you can take that for
whatever it is worth to you. After you read my response,
please send me at least a short reply with your reaction to
it. I want your feedback to what I had to say.