Media Tonnage Alone Cannot Increase Sales.

Without a good idea, most ads & commercials will do little useful work in the consumer's mind.

So, how do I make Ideas?  Creative Thinking is a process. It's a little like playing piano by ear or chipping out of deep rough, from behind a tree, in the rain. Both require good instincts and practice.

A well-thought-out Strategy helps a lot. But even with one I usually have to look at lots of seemingly unrelated facts until - often in an instant - I see an obvious Creative & Media Solution to a Marketing Problem.

Each of these Ten Case Histories required a major turnaround in somebody's thinking - the consumer's or the clients or both. Click the brand names for Deep Background details.

DINOVITE.  About 30 million American families own dogs.  The dogs eat commercial dog foods, which lack certain enzymes and probiotics.  Eventually the dogs acquire a Misery. Eventually the owners decide to fix it: crèmes, lotions, antibiotics, steroids.  Nothing works.  Then they hear one of my "catchy" testimonial commercials on Sirius XM or network radio.  Click here to learn how I used  precision-targeted Direct Response media to drive this brand's weekly revenues from $5,000 to $180,000 in a year and a half.
(Burkhard Works)

ARMY NATIONAL GUARD.  Most 18-22 year olds thought the Guard was a "bunch of pencil-necked geeks."  So we made it an "Irresistible Force."  The campaign  dramatized the true grit and deep swamp available two weeks a year.  It was the highest-pulling campaign in the brand's history.  (DDB/Needham, Washington, DC)

CABLEVISION OF CENTRAL FLORIDA.  Orlando's Time Warner Cable affiliate suffered from persistent operational problems - billing errors, poor service, spotty transmission.  TWC wanted a new company image. I thought the product needed its own image.   "See it on CV" branded the programming, talked about movies, sports, pay per view... and gave TWC time to debug the internals. TV, Print, Radio, Outdoor, DM, Paint the Trucks... (Gouchenour, Orlando.)

CARNIVAL CRYSTAL PALACE.  This gargantuan white elephant hotel in the Bahamas was much too pricey for Carnival Cruise Line's budget-conscious patrons.   "Work Work Play Play" repositioned the brand against upscale Type A+ personalities, and increased occupancy from 59% to the high 80's in a matter of weeks. Carnival was soon able to unload the $40MM White Elephant to a consortium of sun-loving Type A+ German investors.
(Freelance at Yesawich, Pepperdine & Brown)

DICE.COM.  This IT job board ran help-wanted ads in magazines such as Dr. Dobbs promoting its 32,000 code-techie-programming listings.  I put the brand on the air.  My "Click the Dice" testimonial radio & cablenet campaign drove millions of IT pros to the board and placed 128,000 of them in jobs.  That earned HR folks and Recruiters an extra $1.2 billion in commissions (at about $8K per) and boosted Dice's revenues from $14 to $40 million in 18 months.  Details. (Burkhard Works)

EASTERN AIRLINES.   People hated Eastern; the employees returned the sentiment.  Frank Borman asked his agency, Young & Rubicam New York for help.  I said, "Let's use network TV invertising to remind 40,000 employees in 104 markets that the customer expects professionalism, not an attitude. "We Have To Earn Our Wings Every Day" helped resolve a protracted war between Management and the Unions and keep flying for another eight years.  Y&RNY's Highest recall line of the decade. (Young & Rubicam, New York)

MELLO YELLO.  "The World's Fastest Soft Drink" became Coca Cola's most successful brand launch since Tab.  It took some wrangling, though.    Management wanted to cover Mountain Dew with a lemony soda and a Country Hillbilly image.
I discovered - after poring through Nielsen data and focus groups - that kids do the Dew because they can swig down a whole bottle in one gulp.  My fast-drinking strategy won the account and, sometime later, 5% of the soft drink market.   (McDonald & Little, Atlanta.)

NATIONAL DYNAMICS SPEED TAPES. To increase network radio response from 2,000 to 5,000 calls per week, I had to diagnose, then defuse the customer's main objection: "I was never any good at memorizing languages." So I produced about 40 :30 Radio language lessons that each taught an easy to remember phrase in Spanish, such as S-O-C-K-S. The campaign earned $35 million.  (BurkhardWorks)

PARTNERS NATIONAL HEALTH PLANS.   Internal strife between Aetna, the 500 Voluntary Hospitals of America, and 40,000 affiliated doctors nearly kill this PPO before it was born started.  My brand name and "Choose Your Partners Well" TV, Radio and Print persuaded the JV players to bury the hatchet and work together. (LGFE, Project.)

PULTE HOMES.  No Sales for Six Months.  Why?   This Week's active condo shoppers consistently saw ads for better deals in the Washington Post Real Estate Section.  So I went after Next Week's shoppers in the Entertainment, Sports and Auto sections.  Ninety units sold out in about six weeks.  A minor save, perhaps, but tasty.  (Freelance, Washington, DC.)

What have you done for us recently?

Fair question.  I do very little print these days.  Mostly Radio and TV.
I usually post new radio campaigns on the Radio Show page or my Top 200 page.  In the past year: more Dinovite, Quality Smith, Be Heard Today, Plan to Foreclose, SutraMax, True West...

Here's another fair question:  What have you done for yourself recently?

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