February 2005
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One-Hit Wonders—Trade Shows, Events and Press Conferences |
 to this month's edition of M45 Momentum, a monthly e-newsletter for the business community featuring tips, trends and trivia from the experts at M45 Marketing Services.
Some events, by their very nature, are intended to be "one-hit wonders"—events such as grand openings, press conferences, open houses, etc. But there are times when a one-hit wonder just won't do. You certainly wouldn't want people to visit your website only once, and you wouldn't develop media advertising with a short shelf life.
At M45, we can help you make the smart choices—web-based, print media, or any other marketing service, one-hit wonders or long-term marketing strategies. Call on us for your marketing needs from event planning to technical communication, from employee communication to graphic design M45 can help!
We help you identify and evaluate your options—one-time stint, short-term strategy or a long-term campaign—and then implement your plan with measurable results in mind. We'll help you decide if a one-hit wonder can—or cannot—work wonders for your business. 
P.S. Here are some tips to help you avoid the one-hit wonder syndrome on
your website.
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Is there a rule of thumb for how often a business should advertise in newspapers, on radio, on television, or through direct mail or email pieces? Independent research sources have indicated that it takes about nine to 12 impressions to bring someone to make a personal financial decision.
If that seems extreme, think of your last major purchase and place yourself in the following timeline:
- The first time a person looks at an advertisement, he does not see it.
- The second time, he does not notice it.
- The third time, he is conscious of its existence.
- The fourth time, he faintly remembers having seen it before.
- The fifth time, he reads it.
- The sixth time, he turns up his nose at it.
- The seventh time, he reads it through and says, "Oh brother!"
- The eighth time, he says, "Here's that confounded thing again!"
- The ninth time, he wonders if it amounts to anything.
- The tenth time, he asks his neighbor if he has tried it.
- The eleventh time, he wonders how the advertiser makes it pay.
- The twelfth time, he thinks it must be a good thing.
- The thirteenth time, he thinks perhaps it might be worth something.
- The fourteenth time, he remembers wanting such a thing a long time.
- The fifteenth time, he is tantalized because he cannot afford to buy it.
- The sixteenth time, he thinks he will buy it some day.
- The seventeenth time, he makes a memorandum to buy it.
- The eighteenth time, he swears at his poverty.
- The nineteenth time, he counts his money carefully.
- The twentieth time he sees the ad, he buys what it is offering.
(Thomas Smith, "How Advertising Frequency Equates to Advertising Effectiveness," 1885)
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Marketing for Beginners
You see a someone very attractive at a party and you say "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me!"
—That's Direct Marketing
You see someone very attractive at a party and you get their telephone number. The next day you call and say, "I'm very rich. Marry me."
—That's Telemarketing
You're at a party and you see someone very attractive who walks up to you and says, "You are very rich."
—That's Brand Recognition
You see a someone very attractive at a party and you say "I'm rich. Marry me." They laugh and walk away.
—That's Customer Feedback
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One-hit wonders...or two-bit blunders?
One-hit wonders. They're a phenomenon in the music world, associated with unforgettable popularity for a one-time achievement. And they can be miraculous—or disastrous—in the business world, too.
As is true in the personal realm, some work-related events are simply once-in-a-lifetime. Think about:
- The grand-opening of a new building
- An award-winning accomplishment, highly coveted in your field
- Anniversaries of "years in business"
- Industry-first product introductions
These kinds of red-letter days deserve to be recognized and enjoyed, but also utilized (indeed, milked for all they're worth)! Opportunities like these just don't happen every day.
We at M45 can help you evaluate your important "events" and whether or not they deserve special attention. Perhaps a press conference is in order. Or an open house. Maybe you should consider a trade-show stint. A full-page ad or even a full-blown campaign.
Part of our expertise is to ask you tough questions that will help you make the right decisions for your business. Working together we can define goals and objectives tailor made for your situation. As partners, we can use integrated marketing and a fresh-eyes approach that will help you see beyond the obvious strategies. And, because we've coordinated so many special events, our logistics wizards can put together a plan that will help ensure smooth implementation.
Because your one-time event can be the right kind of one-hit wonder, or a mediocre event that no one talks about less than a month post-mortem.
Some things happen only once but we remember them forever. Make your event more memorable by working with M45. Call us at 232-2121 to get going!
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If you are planning an event for 2005, check these calendars to avoid conflicts with scheduling. Or host a "theme event" around one of the holidays to make it a memorable occasion. And remember to advertise that one-time event MORE than one time!
World Calendar (includes holidays from 75 countries)
U.S. Holidays: Religious and Secular, 2005
Festivals Around the World
When once IS enough...
While one-hit wonders—i.e., an ad running just once—are usually worse than running no ad at all, there may be one notable exception: Super Bowl ads.
A recent survey of 500 consumers by InsightExpress found that 54% of Americans watch the game, but 50% watch specifically for the commercials and 58% said they pay closer attention to ads during the Super Bowl than those they see every day. This matches more than a decade of research into recall of Super Bowl advertising by Bruzzone Research Co. of Alameda, Calif., which has found week-later recall of Super Bowl advertising is generally better than recall of other primetime advertising—even when the ad only airs once. But, it's a mighty big gamble: for Super Bowl XXXIX this year, the average cost per second of advertising was $80,000. Because of the hype associated with Super Bowl ads and the game's reputation for first-run commercials, the importance of the creative is greatly magnified—for good and bad. For example, the 20% of Super Bowl ads best remembered by consumers in the Bruzzone surveys have eight times the impact, as measured by week-later recall, of the lowest-rated 20%. Week-after consumer recall for individual ads in last year's Super Bowl ranged from 12% to 79%.
Two of the most memorable commercials in television advertising history have been One-Hit Super Bowl Wonders. The 1984 Apple commercial with an Orwellian theme wherea woman runs through drab, drone-like workers and then smashes a television screen projecting a "Big Brother" type visual was one minute long, and ran only once—ever. It has among the highest recall in advertising history, and frequently makes advertising professionals' "Top Ten" lists of the most arresting commercials in TV advertising history.
Another one-hit wonder is the Master Lock commercial that aired for the first time in 1974 and was modified slightly for the Big Game every year for 21 years, until 1997. That commercial—the first 5-secondtelevision commercial in Super Bowl history and arguably the best example of really hitting the target explosively in terms of recall—represented between two-thirds and three-quarters of Master Lock's entire advertising budget for the year. It was a real bet on a high-profile ad, and it worked; this ad also is often included on lists of "most memorable commercials of all time."
So, if you happen to have a spare $80,000 lying around—or a spare $400,000, the approximate 2005 value of the 5-second Master Lock commercial—maybe you can strike gold with a one-hit wonder. And, we'd love to help you spend that advertising budget! But in the meantime, we'll keep on customizing the "reach and frequency" strategies that we believe serve our clients best, for the day-to-day competition "beyond" the Super Bowl.
See a rundown of ESPN's choice Best Super Bowl commercials of all time—including the two referenced above.
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Thanks to the ingenuity of a naval engineer, the amazing 
And what about those one-hit wonders of the music world?
Here today, gone tomorrow, but totally unforgettable, they're VH1's 
