Slogan Wanted: $50 if I use yours..

[Bill Bumface]

Cenovus paid some firm a billion dollars to come up with "Cenovus" and a slogan of "Rigorous, Respectful, Ready".

For $50 I would have given them an obvious, and better one: "Ask your doctor about Cenovus"

[Bill Bumface]

Originally Posted by fotze

$100k? holy crap, I was thinking a lot less than that....

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by hulkrogan

Cenovus paid some firm a billion dollars to come up with "Cenovus" and a slogan of "Rigorous, Respectful, Ready".

With all those R's, they better be using a pirate as a spokesperson.

[Discoste]

These ads worked in the movie...for certain demographics

NSFW!

[ricosuave]

"I helped Wannamaker, and I can help YOU!"

[evman150]

Originally Posted by Dion

Everything I touch turns to sold.

A real estate agent out here uses that slogan from time to time.

He's an interesting character:

http://youtu.be/0rpP8gr1DjY

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Table 5

It's not just fun, it's his business. He's probably already spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on this advertising. Cheaping out on the actual message is going to cost him much more than just 50 bucks. It will waste his time and the money that went into purchasing the advertising space.

The message has to resonate and hold true. On my way to work, I keep seeing this bus bench of some dude advertising his real estate services... basically some pimple-faced teen with the generic tag-line of "a name you can trust". Right, you're fresh out of high school and I'm supposed to trust your vast experience. Probably paid $50 bucks for that too.

Travis isn't asking for anything outlandish here and the $50 offer was nice I thought. In some ways, the people here are our daytime "buddies" and I think he was asking us as his pseudo-buddies and not looking for free professional services like how you took it.

With enough people thinking about it here we could get lucky and come up with something as good or better than something he could get by paying a marketing firm. Nothing wrong with asking...CPers ask the lawyers for help here all the time. Just yesterday or the day before Ktrain was coaching somebody on photoshop and I think he does that professionally.

A good seven-word slogan is difficult, though. As Mark Twain said, "I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one." You can get lucky and come up with something good right away on this Travis and hopefully CP can help, but this is also the kind of thing that could take a pro six hours. You never know.

I agree with Table 5 that the ad should be awesome or you're wasting your time. If you don't come up with something good, I have a friend who is a copywriter that is great at slogans but he'd probably cost you closer to $100/hour.

[Travis Munroe]

^^ you hit the nail on the head with the daytime buddies thing.
I actually feel that the crazy/creative minds of cp might of come up with something better than any professional.
Paying people extreme amounts does not mean I will get something better than paying someone $50 on CP.

[KTrain]

I understand where Table 5 is coming from with this. I'm not a huge fan of spec contests that ask a bunch of people to do work and only one person gets paid for it. Especially when the company/person has the potential to make thousands of dollars off that work. I'm not saying a slogan on a bus bench is going to make Travis a ton of money but the potential is there.

It would be comparable to me asking Travis and a dozen other realtors to write up the description of my house for MLS. Each of them spends time doing it, I pick one, throw away the rest and pay the person that won a pittance of the money I'll be making on the sale of my home.

I'll help people with Photoshop questions if they're easy enough to answer. Telling people how to copy/paste and resize an image is quick and is easily found elsewhere on the internet. It's not a skill that takes years to develop.

That being said, Travis I think you'll be wasting your money if you don't put together a marketing strategy for your company. You seem to be throwing as much as you can against the wall, hoping something will stick, when you could be more targeted in your approach to advertising.

[surferguy]

How about this...

probably too subtle but you get the idea...

[Winsor_Pilates]

Originally Posted by Dion

Everything I touch turns to sold.

There's a guy here in Vancouver who has that on the back of buses. I think it's terrible personally, but I guess most slogans (mine included) are pretty cheesy.

[justkidding]

Your website does not look good in Firefox. I thought your slogan was "Your pal in real".

[Dion]

"My streets are paved with sold signs"

[Shawnski]

"Home is where my smart is"

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by KTrain

I understand where Table 5 is coming from with this. I'm not a huge fan of spec contests that ask a bunch of people to do work and only one person gets paid for it. Especially when the company/person has the potential to make thousands of dollars off that work. I'm not saying a slogan on a bus bench is going to make Travis a ton of money but the potential is there.

It would be comparable to me asking Travis and a dozen other realtors to write up the description of my house for MLS. Each of them spends time doing it, I pick one, throw away the rest and pay the person that won a pittance of the money I'll be making on the sale of my home.

If Travis offered his $50 on marketingforum.com where only marketing professionals hung out, I think your point would be valid. But he wasn't asking for the help necessarily of professionals; he was asking for anybody's help. Add to that the fact we all hang around posting on this board all day anyway, he was pretty much offering people $50 to do what we normally do for free.

Originally Posted by KTrain

I'll help people with Photoshop questions if they're easy enough to answer. Telling people how to copy/paste and resize an image is quick and is easily found elsewhere on the internet. It's not a skill that takes years to develop.

That being said, Travis I think you'll be wasting your money if you don't put together a marketing strategy for your company. You seem to be throwing as much as you can against the wall, hoping something will stick, when you could be more targeted in your approach to advertising.

I totally agree with this.

Travis, I think you need to remember what you're selling...you. You're not selling houses, you're selling your ability to broker deals between buyers and sellers. Don't waste your money and effort trying to attract attention to one house (e.g. your wacky-inflatable-arm-waving guy) as you stand too low a probability of that paying off.

This also goes for putting up listings on here. People will critique them and nothing good comes from that. If I was your client it would actually piss me off to read what we say about them. Interesting listings like multi-million dollar listings are worth posting, but your average house in Deer Run? What for? The probability of one of the maybe 40 people that check this forum out buying it are so remote that it makes it pointless to do.

Another issue you have to look at IMO is your deal with CP. First thing you should do is get powerful mod privileges in your sub-forum and remove from existence (not just mod edit) any negative posts that reflect poorly on you. This obviously has the potential to limit conversation, but I think the challenge of that will be for you as the moderator to foster a positive, constructive atmosphere here. If you can't, you need to think about this deal because as an outsider looking in, it doesn't seem to be working for you like it could.

As an example of what I'm talking about, take this post:

Originally Posted by Table 5

Wowee, $50.
Next time I need someone to sell my house, I'll offer you a kit-kat for your services.

You should be on that as fast as possible to delete it so it looks like it was never posted. It instantly derailed this thread right out of the gates to obliterate your message. After you removed it, you should have gone back to your OP, added a blurb like "Please note, I'm not looking to take advantage of any professional services...just thought we could all have a little fun brainstorming and maybe us amateurs could show those pros how it's really done." That would hopefully diffuse the concerns of those in the professional crowd. Then a PM to Table 5 thanking him for raising the issue would have finished off your damage control.

Those are just a couple of notes. But the point is basically an expansion of Ktrain's - you need to put a few bucks into talking to a marketing professional to come up with a clear and effective strategy.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Sliver

Travis isn't asking for anything outlandish here and the $50 offer was nice I thought. In some ways, the people here are our daytime "buddies" and I think he was asking us as his pseudo-buddies and not looking for free professional services like how you took it.

Which is why I think he'd be much better off asking for a favor as opposed to holding some sort of spec contest. People here are very generous with their advice indeed (Ive been the recipient of some good advice and tried to offer the same), but it's all under the guise of forum kinship. As soon as you put a monetary value to something, you're saying that's what it's worth, which is where things can get insulting. I know it sounds like I'm being picky, but this type of "hey, I'm doing you a favor" type of spec work is pretty rampant in the industry.

And like I said, spending all that money on advertising, and then cheaping out on the actual message is just poor strategy. I'd be willing to bet investing in Ktrains friends services for a couple of hours would get him results that would pay off many times over.

In the end, you get what you pay for, and so far, he's getting exactly that.

[Table 5]

Originally Posted by Sliver

You should be on that as fast as possible to delete it so it looks like it was never posted.

They may take my words, but they'll never take... MY FREEDOM!

[normtwofinger]

...

[GreatWhiteEbola]

I will not write a stupid slogan on this bench, I will sell your house...for a large percentage with as little effort as possible.

[Travis Munroe]

Silver,

I agree with most of what you said and know I need to set up a follow up meeting on my sponsorship as it is something I am in for the long haul.
Not only would deleting certain posts be beneficial but being able to completely delete certain threads once they are dated.
I am the type of person who is always looking to one up the next real estate agent in terms of creativity. This often comes with stupid ideas such as the inflatable arm but it also is what allows me to find some not so dumb ideas that end up working out.
Having my listings on cp has been a positive. While you may not like to read what people say about your property, it is general feedback. Feedback is one of the most important things when trying to sell a property so that adjustments can be made. (no the ceiling fan is not coming down at deer run).
Posting my listings has also brought about great discussions on the area/building. The ArriVa listings thread was quite informative.
Lastly, with the amount of traffic that CP has I see no reason not to go for that extra exposure. Open houses are said to have less than a 2% chance of selling a property. Does this mean that they shouldn't be done? It doesn't matter if there is a 1% chance or a 50% chance I think it is important to try everything.