What is the main reason for a local candidate to run TV commercial? Is it to express a certain issue? Is it to point out flaws in a competitor? Maybe, but the main reason to do local TV is about image. You are introducing yourself to people you don’t know and the best way to do that besides showing up at all the meet and greet events and shaking hands is a finely crafted TV commercial. I use the words finely crafted, because it takes a lot of skill from a TV commercial producer to make a good, effective commercial, where the candidate comes across as professional, caring, and knowledgeable about the position they’re running for. It’s easy to throw something together for a few hundred bucks, but if it doesn’t make the candidate look good, it’s a waste of money. It only takes one badly light scene to tarnish a good image.
Cost of Production
The cost a producing a good TV commercial has come down in price drastically over the past 10 years. I used to work on political spots in the 80’s and 90’s that cost upwards of $6,000 for a 30 second commercial. The same commercials today cost around $1,000, mostly because of the technology coming down in price. I shoot all of my spots in HD (High Definition) to give even more bang for the buck.
Beware of the free commercial giveaway! Some stations and cable outlets will offer you free commercial production if you spent over a certain amount on placement. I look at your commercial as a vehicle (It’s you and your messege, image, ideas, etc.) and the placement is the tires, the things that get your message out there and seen. So imagine going to a tire store and the salesman says, “If you buy 4 tires, we’ll throw in a car for free!”. Well tell me, just how good is that car going to be? It will most likely fail after a few miles on the road.
Cost of Placement
Placement is actually buying time to run the commercials on TV. There are only 2 outlets you can go to. Local network affiliates (WNEP, WBRE, FOX), and a cable insertion company, The latter can place the commercials in specific regions on cable networks like Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, etc.
Spots that air on the local news can cost around a $1,000 dollars, and can reach lots of people throughout the entire county, while the cable insertion rates are only 5-10 dollars a pop, so $1000 and get you about 150 airs in a specific region of the county.
One service that Video Innovations offers to all clients free of charge is that we upload the all of our clients commercials to our YouTube Channel so people can see the spots at their convenience, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. We also give them an unloadable copy of the video so they can send it to their FaceBook, MySpace, and other social media accounts.
I wish all the local candidates well, and regardless of what common sense may tell us, image can be everything!
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